# kaal:position:2026-08-08-370

**Affirmed position.** Strategic Mining in Proof-of-Stake with Practical Random Election identifies a concrete failure in validator selection. Distributed random beacons fix randomness across several slots because of latency. Validators can infer future election information. The study reports that, without propagation delay, a validator with any proportion of stake can profit from strategic mining and obtain higher block rewards than prior strategies. The result extends Kaal's claim that fixed consensus rules remain vulnerable to strategic gaming as conditions change. It is limited to the modeled protocol and its no-delay assumption. The evidence does not establish failure across all proof-of-stake systems.

**Status.** affirmed  **Published.** 2026-08-08

**Holds when.**

- The response is limited to the exact Crossref proposition and the one mapped Kaal claim.
- External evidence level: current Crossref record, frozen review receipt, and exact evidence passages.
- Mapping review tier: independent substantive general-literature extension.
- The reported result assumes no propagation delay.
- The evidence does not establish failure across every proof-of-stake protocol.
- Publisher HTML and the Crossref abstract were verified.

**Current debate.** Strategic Mining in Proof-of-Stake with Practical Random Election: https://doi.org/10.33140/amlai.06.04.01

**Extends.** kaal:claim:3125827-001: https://wulfkaal.github.io/claims/3125827-001

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

**Source PDF sha256.** `598d9bd95e4af7a0a35328677c6bfc069f69f2e32c30c720b3a0be98a23a40cb`

**Evidence level.** Current Crossref record with immutable review receipt

**Mapping review tier.** independent substantive general-literature extension

**Mapping confidence.** 0.62  **Mapping ambiguous.** false

**Topics.** consensus-and-security, regulatory-failure, blockchain, governance-design, scholarly-literature, crossref, evidence-provenance

**Provenance.** Affirmed in kaal-review:2026-08-08:continuous-crossref-0036-all-0106-reviewed-v1 at https://wulfkaal.github.io/positions/by-date/2026-08-08.html.

**Record type.** This is a dated commentary position that extends a scholarly corpus claim. It is not a verbatim claim extracted from the paper.

**Canonical form.** This markdown file is the canonical hashed representation of the position.