# kaal:claim:3125827-040

**Claim.** A malicious party using Sybil accounts cannot be prevented from cloning the structure of a successful proof of stake blockchain at far lower cost than cloning a proof of work chain, leaving a new user unable to distinguish the truly decentralized chain from a clone that has manufactured even more tokens. The authors answer that this is resolved off chain, by a trusted user interface, as with cloned web pages.

**Type.** failure  **Support.** argued

**Holds when.**

- new users joining without prior knowledge of the genuine chain
- PoS chains where clone creation costs only new public keys

**Source quote.**

> Then, when a new user joins the network, how will they be able to distinguish a truly decentralized blockchain from a cloned blockchain that has manufactured an even larger number of tokens?

**From.** Craig Calcaterra, Wulf A. Kaal, *Secure Proof of Stake Protocol* (2018), 6 Analysis, page 28

**Cite as.** Craig Calcaterra, Wulf A. Kaal, Secure Proof of Stake Protocol (2018). SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=3125827

**Verify.** sha256 of source PDF `598d9bd95e4af7a0a35328677c6bfc069f69f2e32c30c720b3a0be98a23a40cb` at https://raw.githubusercontent.com/wulfkaal/Academic-Papers/main/papers/pdf/Calcaterra%20and%20Kaal%20-%202018%20-%20Secure%20Proof%20of%20Stake%20Protocol.pdf

**Failure mode.** chain-cloning-indistinguishability  (family: sybil-and-identity-attack)

**Topics.** blockchain, consensus-and-security, reputation

**Keywords.** blockchain-clones, sybil-attack, trusted-ui, bootstrapping, proof-of-stake

**Canonical form.** This markdown file is the canonical hashed representation of the claim. Its sha256 is the content hash used for attestation.