6 ms·

> Delay of the ice age / difficulty bomb by 1 year, and reduction of block reward from 5 to 3 ether I wonder if the planned switch to proof-of-stake is ever go

by runeks 9y ago

> Delay of the ice age / difficulty bomb by 1 year, and reduction of block reward from 5 to 3 ether I wonder if the planned switch to proof-of-stake is ever going to happen. In any case, what's the point of continuously postponing a pre-programmed difficulty bomb (via a hard for), when miners can just remove this part from the code and continue with that fork if they wish? Because of this, it seems like it doesn't do much difference compared to just switching to PoS via a hard fork whenever it's ready. I mean, if miners really want to continue with PoW, removing those couple of lines, that define the difficulty time bomb, from the Ethereum code surely won't be a problem, right?

ojr 9y ago
you also need a developer ecosystem, I prefer any solution, that is fast, secure, and has low fees
SimonPStevens 9y ago
The preprogrammed difficulty bomb is not to stop people who want to intentional stay on the old fork. It's to stop the old fork winning consensus by default due to people who don't actively upgrade. Pushing through protocol changes could be hard if everyone who takes the default action of doing nothing is counted as a vote against any protocol change. I think we see this with bitcoin where change is very conservative and slow because any change has to gain enough support to be actively upgraded by a majority. The difficulty bomb just means that if there is ever disagreement about a protocol change, everyone will have to actively choose a side rather than the 'no' side getting all the non-active default votes. It basically just means that changes can be done faster.
- metroidfan832 9y ago
  >everyone will have to actively choose a side rather than the 'no' side getting all the non-active default votes No, this just shifts the do-nothings from 'no' to 'yes', as they will have to actively create something that will let them stay with what they currently have. It is technically and morally dangerous because most people aren't technical enough to understand what they are being forced to accept.
  - siong1987 9y ago
    This isn't something that is forced. All of these are planned from the beginning. Frontier -> Homestead -> Metropolis -> Serenity.
    - CryptoPunk 9y ago
      Exactly. The Ice Ages have always been part of the plan. By installing a client with a built-in Ice Age, you're voluntarily joining a pact to upgrade at a certain point in the future. It's game theoretically effective for decentralized consensus.
  - SimonPStevens 9y ago
    I'll confess to only knowing the surface concepts, not the inner technical workings, so I could be wrong here. But this is my understanding. With a future difficutly bomb in the current implentation, when a proposed hard fork from the ethereum team is approaching you have 3 options: 1) You do nothing (you don't vote - the default) - You'll end up on the chain that eventually get's it's difficulty scaled up and will die. You will not be able to continue running this chain practially after this point. 2) You agree with the fork (a yes vote) - You need to actively install the update. 3) You disagree with the fork (a no vote) - You need to activly install a competing patch to remove the bomb. (Assuming we are talking about a widely controversial fork, not just something that you alone oppose. I'm not talking about having to create a patch yourself. I'm talking about the situation where there are two competing sides, both creating their own patches. So the difficulty involved with voting either way is exactly the same, just pick a side and installing their update.) Having the difficulty bomb guarantees that (eventually) all users post fork must have actively made a concious choice one way or the other and upgraded. The users that do nothing are guaranteed to end up on a dead chain, and hence have not cast a vote in either direction. I'm not sure how that can be interpreted as the do-nothings casting yes votes. Anyone who does nothing becomes no part of any future chain.
DennisP 9y ago
They just released the fourth proof of concept for proof of stake, they've simplified the design so it's not much more complicated to implement than proof of work, and they've got some formal proofs of its properties. They're also working on a PoC for the initial sharding design. Here's the latest dev roundup: https://blog.ethereum.org/2017/10/09/roundup-6/ https://blog.ethereum.org/2017/10/09/roundup-6/
- xorcist 9y ago
  Last time the Casper fork was discussed on HN I read through a very long and very dense document only to find out that Vitalik, or someone similar, had a key that decided which blocks were genuine, in case of dispute. I take it that design has not changed? In that case I am surprised the design could not be simplified further.
  - DennisP 9y ago
    Eh, no, there's no special Vitalik key.
    - xorcist 9y ago
      That was a bit tongue in cheek, it's probably the Foundation. The documentation doesn't specify really how it's done, only that the nodes "authenticate out of band" to determine state when necessary.
      - DennisP 9y ago
        There's no key with special privileges. You're probably remembering "weak subjectivity," which is basically an acceptance of things like publicly known checkpoints every now and then. Anyone who's online continually doesn't need to rely on a checkpoint, but in PoS someone new coming in would need it...but this isn't all that different from needing to find out what software they need to run. E.g. Vitalik writes: "It solves the long-range problems with proof of stake by relying on human-driven social information, but leaves to a consensus algorithm the role of increasing the speed of consensus from many weeks to twelve seconds and of allowing the use of highly complex rulesets and a large state. The role of human-driven consensus is relegated to maintaining consensus on block hashes over long periods of time, something which people are perfectly good at. A hypothetical oppressive government which is powerful enough to actually cause confusion over the true value of a block hash from one year ago would also be powerful enough to overpower any proof of work algorithm, or cause confusion about the rules of blockchain protocol." https://blog.ethereum.org/2014/11/25/proof-stake-learned-love-weak-subjectivity/ https://blog.ethereum.org/2014/11/25/proof-stake-learned-lov...

by runeks 9y ago

ojr 9y ago

you also need a developer ecosystem, I prefer any solution, that is fast, secure, and has low fees

SimonPStevens 9y ago

The preprogrammed difficulty bomb is not to stop people who want to intentional stay on the old fork. It's to stop the old fork winning consensus by default due to people who don't actively upgrade. Pushing through protocol changes could be hard if everyone who takes the default action of doing nothing is counted as a vote against any protocol change. I think we see this with bitcoin where change is very conservative and slow because any change has to gain enough support to be actively upgraded by a majority. The difficulty bomb just means that if there is ever disagreement about a protocol change, everyone will have to actively choose a side rather than the 'no' side getting all the non-active default votes. It basically just means that changes can be done faster.

metroidfan832 9y ago
>everyone will have to actively choose a side rather than the 'no' side getting all the non-active default votes No, this just shifts the do-nothings from 'no' to 'yes', as they will have to actively create something that will let them stay with what they currently have. It is technically and morally dangerous because most people aren't technical enough to understand what they are being forced to accept.
- siong1987 9y ago
  This isn't something that is forced. All of these are planned from the beginning. Frontier -> Homestead -> Metropolis -> Serenity.
  - CryptoPunk 9y ago
    Exactly. The Ice Ages have always been part of the plan. By installing a client with a built-in Ice Age, you're voluntarily joining a pact to upgrade at a certain point in the future. It's game theoretically effective for decentralized consensus.
- SimonPStevens 9y ago
  I'll confess to only knowing the surface concepts, not the inner technical workings, so I could be wrong here. But this is my understanding. With a future difficutly bomb in the current implentation, when a proposed hard fork from the ethereum team is approaching you have 3 options: 1) You do nothing (you don't vote - the default) - You'll end up on the chain that eventually get's it's difficulty scaled up and will die. You will not be able to continue running this chain practially after this point. 2) You agree with the fork (a yes vote) - You need to actively install the update. 3) You disagree with the fork (a no vote) - You need to activly install a competing patch to remove the bomb. (Assuming we are talking about a widely controversial fork, not just something that you alone oppose. I'm not talking about having to create a patch yourself. I'm talking about the situation where there are two competing sides, both creating their own patches. So the difficulty involved with voting either way is exactly the same, just pick a side and installing their update.) Having the difficulty bomb guarantees that (eventually) all users post fork must have actively made a concious choice one way or the other and upgraded. The users that do nothing are guaranteed to end up on a dead chain, and hence have not cast a vote in either direction. I'm not sure how that can be interpreted as the do-nothings casting yes votes. Anyone who does nothing becomes no part of any future chain.

DennisP 9y ago

They just released the fourth proof of concept for proof of stake, they've simplified the design so it's not much more complicated to implement than proof of work, and they've got some formal proofs of its properties. They're also working on a PoC for the initial sharding design. Here's the latest dev roundup: https://blog.ethereum.org/2017/10/09/roundup-6/ https://blog.ethereum.org/2017/10/09/roundup-6/

xorcist 9y ago
Last time the Casper fork was discussed on HN I read through a very long and very dense document only to find out that Vitalik, or someone similar, had a key that decided which blocks were genuine, in case of dispute. I take it that design has not changed? In that case I am surprised the design could not be simplified further.
- DennisP 9y ago
  Eh, no, there's no special Vitalik key.
  - xorcist 9y ago
    That was a bit tongue in cheek, it's probably the Foundation. The documentation doesn't specify really how it's done, only that the nodes "authenticate out of band" to determine state when necessary.
    - DennisP 9y ago
      There's no key with special privileges. You're probably remembering "weak subjectivity," which is basically an acceptance of things like publicly known checkpoints every now and then. Anyone who's online continually doesn't need to rely on a checkpoint, but in PoS someone new coming in would need it...but this isn't all that different from needing to find out what software they need to run. E.g. Vitalik writes: "It solves the long-range problems with proof of stake by relying on human-driven social information, but leaves to a consensus algorithm the role of increasing the speed of consensus from many weeks to twelve seconds and of allowing the use of highly complex rulesets and a large state. The role of human-driven consensus is relegated to maintaining consensus on block hashes over long periods of time, something which people are perfectly good at. A hypothetical oppressive government which is powerful enough to actually cause confusion over the true value of a block hash from one year ago would also be powerful enough to overpower any proof of work algorithm, or cause confusion about the rules of blockchain protocol." https://blog.ethereum.org/2014/11/25/proof-stake-learned-love-weak-subjectivity/ https://blog.ethereum.org/2014/11/25/proof-stake-learned-lov...