I have a on-going small private chain could be seen here. I have only few nodes, hence difficulty is pretty low and average block time is high (around a minute). So it can easily attacked with someone who has high computational power, overall it is not that useful and trustable chain.
I want to change my on going private-chain's consortium as from Proof-of-Work into Proof-of-Stake, if possible instead of creating a new chain, I want keep my chain's information. Please note that I control all nodes in the network.
Theoretically,
[Q] Is it possible to change Proof-of-Work into Proof-of-Stake consensus algorithm of an on-going Ethereum private chain? or in order to accomplish this, do we have to create a new chain initialized with Proof-of-Stake consensus algorithm on the genesis block? If yes, how?
[Q] What is the difference between Parity's [ 1 ] and Nixops [ 2 ] approach? Which one is recommended to use?
Some references I found related to this topic:
Rinkeby Ethereum testnet, which uses Proof-of-Authority,
Proof of Authority Chains [ 1 ] and Rolling your own Proof-of-Authority Ethereum consortium [ 2 ].
Thank you for your valuable time and help.
Best Answer
I found that the parity source code has a modular architecture that allows you to switch consensus algorithms.
Take a look, they give several examples. They do not have a proof-of-stake one that I can see yet but my best guess here is that using Parity you should be able to switch round the algorithm and retain the chain. Yet to be tested with Casper.
https://paritytech.github.io/wiki/Pluggable-Consensus