Justin Bons, founder and CIO of Amsterdam-based Cyber Capital, ignited a new round of the proof-of-work versus proof-of-stake debate on Wednesday, asserting that Solana’s “economic security” now exceeds Bitcoin’s and trails only Ethereum’s among the largest networks. In a lengthy X post on August 13, Bons published point-in-time calculations that, by his model, put Ethereum first, Solana second and Bitcoin third on a “cost to attack” basis. “Truth cuts through all the noise & the BS narratives, as economic security can be measured objectively!” he wrote, adding: “PoS is, in fact, way more secure than PoW, by several orders of magnitude.”
Beyond the relative rankings, Bons argued the ratio of “security to market capitalization” is the critical lens because “the bigger the bounty, the greater an attacker might be willing to spend.” In that framing, he contends, proof-of-stake benefits disproportionately from rising market value because attack costs scale with capitalization, whereas proof-of-work relies on an externalized and fluctuating spend on hardware and electricity reflected in miner revenue.
“This also clearly exposes PoW as an inferior technology from a security perspective,” he wrote, claiming that “even with much lower market capitalization, ETH & SOL beat BTC’s security right now, contrary to ‘popular belief’.”
The CIO also assigned zero “economic security” to networks he describes as permissioned or “Proof of Authority,” explicitly naming XRP, BNB and HBAR. “They are based on a different type of consensus algorithm, PoA … which, unlike PoW & PoS, do not rely on economic security!” he wrote. That stance reprises prior critiques he has made of XRP’s governance and validator model.
Bons’ thread drew immediate pushback and requests for clarification. One commenter asked why, if “PoS offers higher security at lower economic drain,” the market’s dominant narrative still treats Bitcoin as the safest asset. Bons replied: “Spot on! The majority of the market is ‘wrong,’ at least in relationship to truth … This will shift as we become more knowledgeable on crypto.”
In a separate exchange, he predicted Bitcoin’s relative security would keep eroding “until the network comes under attack,” unless fee revenue or utility changes the trajectory.
Critics also object to treating market capitalization as spendable attack capital, arguing that buying a controlling stake would push prices up and that liquidity, borrowability and governance responses complicate any static model. “Economic security” formulas that “plug market cap” directly have been called overly simplistic in replies to Bons’ thread.
Bons is a long-time proof-of-stake advocate whose firm describes itself as “Europe’s oldest cryptocurrency fund,” founded in 2016 and based in Amsterdam, and his posts routinely challenge Bitcoin orthodoxy.
His latest claims—placing Solana ahead of Bitcoin on security—will likely fuel renewed scrutiny of what, precisely, should count as an “attack cost” in heterogeneous systems and how dynamic countermeasures, from slashing and social recovery to client diversity and fee market design, factor into any defensible ranking. The only consensus, for now, is that the question of security—and how to measure it—remains as contested as ever.
At press time, the Solana token traded at $201.
