There are only a few truly unique cryptocurrencies right now. For best or for worst, NANO is one of them.
ALL PoS AND PoW systems (except nano's) rely on incentivizing owners of the coins network to run nodes that validate the transactions made by others on the network. There are problems with both. The unanimously agreed upon idea is that there HAS to be a financial incentive for the people on the network to process transactions or it can't be kept existent and secure.
BTC's PoW system has worked without failure for 10 years but it may have future issues we have not yet run encountered. There are people that bash the power consumption like it's a disaster and people that don't give a shit but I hope both sides agree that if it weren't 100% necessary to use all that energy, it would be beneficial for everyone overall.
Another overall PoW issue is the hardware. Companies (bitmain) improve/innovate on hardware, privately manufacture it, and eventually release it on the market (maybe fairly. or maybe only when they're financially incentivized to do so). So PoW systems either allow this to happen and hope that the overall distribution of hashrate from the hardware is fair enough that it's physically impossible for any one party to gain 51% of the hashrate... or we try to fight ASIC's using ever-changing algorithms only understood by a small group of people while the rest of us HOPE no one has hardware that can drastically outperfrom the hardware used by fair participants. So far this has very clearly failed and some projects are very lucky that those who had the chance never 51% attacked the network. There is hope but it's not at honestly known if developing a mutating algorithm that can prevent the incentive to develop and manufacture ASIC's is possible.
PoS systems are not battle tested at the level of BTC's PoW. No matter how many different complications you add to the process one thing never changes... Those that have the most money have the most control and make the most money. On an infinite timeline that fails without question as long as the richest person (or small group of people in Delegated Proof of Stake) chooses to be a bad actor/s. If they choose to stay good actors the system's so far have functioned well. On a long enough timeline though, I think it's good to question whether or not that is exactly the same as typical centralization with a little extra something to slow it down.
NANO is completely different from any other cryptocurrency because it doesn't consume energy like PoW, doesn't guarantee the rich get richer like PoS, and doesn't financially incentivize anyone to volunteer nodes in order to process transactions. In NANO people run publicly accessible nodes and these nodes process transactions for zero incentive. (or is it???) No one is working hard or putting in additional effort to process these transactions because they don't get paid. Who knows why people run nodes. Maybe it's because it's inexpensive to do and they may have enough of a financial incentive to keep the system running simply because they have some NANO. Maybe it's totally irrational or random and some do it for no reason at all. Maybe some people just feel like it. I'm not going to get too in depth on what stops someone from bending the network to their own wishes so don't get me wrong. There's some serious attack surface issues that may or may not exist for this system and it all comes down to human behavior. This is something that if you're interested I think you really need to research for yourself before considering speculating. No one really knows what's going to happen but I'm rooting for NANO to stick around for a while. If it's consensus mechanism (or lack there-of) withstands some test of time we can start branching off it and developing cryptocurrencies that improve on it or maybe even change ones that are currently consuming power without reducing it's attack surface. Just MAYBE
ALL PoS AND PoW systems (except nano's) rely on incentivizing owners of the coins network to run nodes that validate the transactions made by others on the network. There are problems with both. The unanimously agreed upon idea is that there HAS to be a financial incentive for the people on the network to process transactions or it can't be kept existent and secure.
BTC's PoW system has worked without failure for 10 years but it may have future issues we have not yet run encountered. There are people that bash the power consumption like it's a disaster and people that don't give a shit but I hope both sides agree that if it weren't 100% necessary to use all that energy, it would be beneficial for everyone overall.
Another overall PoW issue is the hardware. Companies (bitmain) improve/innovate on hardware, privately manufacture it, and eventually release it on the market (maybe fairly. or maybe only when they're financially incentivized to do so). So PoW systems either allow this to happen and hope that the overall distribution of hashrate from the hardware is fair enough that it's physically impossible for any one party to gain 51% of the hashrate... or we try to fight ASIC's using ever-changing algorithms only understood by a small group of people while the rest of us HOPE no one has hardware that can drastically outperfrom the hardware used by fair participants. So far this has very clearly failed and some projects are very lucky that those who had the chance never 51% attacked the network. There is hope but it's not at honestly known if developing a mutating algorithm that can prevent the incentive to develop and manufacture ASIC's is possible.
PoS systems are not battle tested at the level of BTC's PoW. No matter how many different complications you add to the process one thing never changes... Those that have the most money have the most control and make the most money. On an infinite timeline that fails without question as long as the richest person (or small group of people in Delegated Proof of Stake) chooses to be a bad actor/s. If they choose to stay good actors the system's so far have functioned well. On a long enough timeline though, I think it's good to question whether or not that is exactly the same as typical centralization with a little extra something to slow it down.
NANO is completely different from any other cryptocurrency because it doesn't consume energy like PoW, doesn't guarantee the rich get richer like PoS, and doesn't financially incentivize anyone to volunteer nodes in order to process transactions. In NANO people run publicly accessible nodes and these nodes process transactions for zero incentive. (or is it???) No one is working hard or putting in additional effort to process these transactions because they don't get paid. Who knows why people run nodes. Maybe it's because it's inexpensive to do and they may have enough of a financial incentive to keep the system running simply because they have some NANO. Maybe it's totally irrational or random and some do it for no reason at all. Maybe some people just feel like it. I'm not going to get too in depth on what stops someone from bending the network to their own wishes so don't get me wrong. There's some serious attack surface issues that may or may not exist for this system and it all comes down to human behavior. This is something that if you're interested I think you really need to research for yourself before considering speculating. No one really knows what's going to happen but I'm rooting for NANO to stick around for a while. If it's consensus mechanism (or lack there-of) withstands some test of time we can start branching off it and developing cryptocurrencies that improve on it or maybe even change ones that are currently consuming power without reducing it's attack surface. Just MAYBE