This talk will discuss “Compounding of Wealth in Proof-of-Stake Cryptocurrencies,” a preprint of work by Giulia Fanti, Leonid Kogan, Sewoong Oh, Kathleen Ruan, Pramod Viswanath, and Gerui Wang. Proof of Stake cryptocurrencies choose which user will issue the next block at random, proportional to each user's stake in the system. Because issuing a block awards some amount of the currency, this can cause a snowball effect such that a user who is lucky early on has an increased chance of winning for the lifetime of the currency. The paper investigates how this effect might be mitigated by changing the amount of currency awarded for issuing a block. No blockchain/cryptocurrency background required to enjoy this talk!