Which piano notation is correct?

The staccato markings are clearly much less cumbersome.

If the piece is from the baroque era, we know the staccato marked notes are played at exactly half their written duration.This is still the current notational convention, unless you want a more rounded 'finish' to the detached notes and less aggressive rests.

Post classical era, there is a slight difference, where the staccato would be half the value + a hair, to 'round the sound' off a bit. Orchestral players habitually trail the written note before a rest a hair into the rest - almost a legato from sound to silence. Contemporary notation might ask or expect a very sharp cut-off without the 'trail-over' roundness.

If you are not composing hard-core modern vocabulary music, the staccato marking is more than adequate. Pianists are more used to reading beamed groups, vocalists and instrumentalist are quite used to the notation of individual flags and rests, not beamed as a group.

If this piece had a contemporary date and was notated with the rests, I would 'play the rests' aggressively and accurately.

Stravinsky went as far as to make three clearly different sized dots to distinguish how crisp or 'secco' the staccato should be.

best regards.

Not the same, but very similar. There is a difference between 8th notes that are staccato and 16th notes. A staccato indicates the a note is short. It does not specify how short at all. On the other hand 16th notes are half as short as 8th notes. Very specific on how short. So the difference between the two would be fraction of 1, and half of 1.

Both of them work, but the correct one is up to the composer. If he/she wants exactly 16th note short, then the 1st one is correct while if he/she wants just short, then the 2nd one is correct.

The second version is much more desirable in respect to readability. If you want a special interpretation of the staccato eighth notes then that can be written in the parts and score or in the performance notes.

Musician, composer/arranger, director and teacher.