Verifier's Dilemma

Blockchains that support Turing-complete computation, like Ethereum, often impose a limit on the amount of computation within a block—commonly known as the gas limit. This limit helps avoid throughput bottlenecks but is necessary to prevent the Verifier's Dilemma. The gas limit ensures that the time spent verifying transactions remains small compared to the effort required to solve the proof-of-work (PoW) challenge, minimizing the risk that a node falls behind in mining the next block.

In Proof-of-Stake (PoS) blockchains, the Verifier’s Dilemma can still occur when there are incentives for speed, especially in high-throughput systems. Verifying a large number of transactions can consume significant computational resources. However, by separating the processes of consensus and computation, consensus nodes no longer need to worry about verifying the correctness of execution results. This separation allows for increasing the gas limit in each block without facing the same issues of the Verifier’s Dilemma or slowing down consensus.