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Sure Dapps might be an interesting concept but let's not pretend it is free from manipulation. Miners are the gatekeepers to the system. F2Pool is one of the b

Sure Dapps might be an interesting concept but let's not pretend it is free from manipulation. Miners are the gatekeepers to the system. F2Pool is one of the biggest pools in Ethereum. It was alleged that they manipulated the Status ICO: https://themerkle.com/f2pool-allegedly-prevented-users-from-investing-in-status-ico/ https://themerkle.com/f2pool-allegedly-prevented-users-from-... They controlled 26.6% of the total Ethereum hashing power. So, lets say this twitter clone - Peepeth takes off. And then there is someone who wants to post some stuff against F2pool. What is stopping F2pool from manipulating the feed? You might say other miners controlling 75% of the hashrate will pick it up. Sure, you might be correct. But what if the post shits on every other mining pool out there? What happens then? What if the post is time sensitive? Decentralized apps can only go so far considering there has to be a record for the system to work. And if record keepers manipulate the system it will fail. The question becomes then: Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?

splintercell 9y ago
> And then there is someone who wants to post some stuff against F2pool. What is stopping F2pool from manipulating the feed? It's the difference between 'unstable equilibrium' vs 'stable equilibrium'. The power of a centralized entity on their service, like twitter on a feed is a stable equilibrium, they can modify something and not face too many repercussions (like when we see what happened with Wells Fargo scandal). On the other hand, the power of a major player in a decentralized setup is an 'unstable equilibrium', if you modify something into your favor, your power goes away really fast. And cryptocurrency networks have shown that they are extremely sensitive towards any changes or abuse of power made by a major player. It also makes a lot of sense from game theoretic perspective. The hard fork made by the Ethereum community was such an example, it was so contentious that even though they succeeded, they are very resistant towards any such changes in future. With Proof of Stake, the 'stability' of unstable equilibrium of F2Pool (presuming F2Pool is a large staking pool at that point) becomes even more unstable. In PoW if F2Pool performs a harmful action, then any attempts to undo that harmful action does not harm F2Pool, they just neutralize their attempt. Whereas in PoS consensus, any attempts by F2Pool to perform a harmful action would result in them losing their wealth.
jjallen 9y ago
Having a huge mining pool is super lucrative. Why would you want to mess with your underlying cryptocurrency and threaten your income if you're a mining pool?
- homakov 9y ago
  Incentives dont matter, any centralized entity has no incentive to do bad things about their system yet here we are.
  - jjallen 9y ago
    In most centralized entities, interests are conflicted. With mining, the value of the income is directly determined by the price of the cryptocurrency.
    - homakov 9y ago
      There are other incentives beyond most obvious ones. E.g. hijacked miner could attack to pump another currency (crypto/fiat) the miner holds. Incentives are out of equation when you speak of fault tolerance. Incentives are not calculatable. Only "tolerance" (# of tolerable byzantine nodes) matters. And that's 2 for eth and btc. TWO.

splintercell 9y ago

> And then there is someone who wants to post some stuff against F2pool. What is stopping F2pool from manipulating the feed? It's the difference between 'unstable equilibrium' vs 'stable equilibrium'. The power of a centralized entity on their service, like twitter on a feed is a stable equilibrium, they can modify something and not face too many repercussions (like when we see what happened with Wells Fargo scandal). On the other hand, the power of a major player in a decentralized setup is an 'unstable equilibrium', if you modify something into your favor, your power goes away really fast. And cryptocurrency networks have shown that they are extremely sensitive towards any changes or abuse of power made by a major player. It also makes a lot of sense from game theoretic perspective. The hard fork made by the Ethereum community was such an example, it was so contentious that even though they succeeded, they are very resistant towards any such changes in future. With Proof of Stake, the 'stability' of unstable equilibrium of F2Pool (presuming F2Pool is a large staking pool at that point) becomes even more unstable. In PoW if F2Pool performs a harmful action, then any attempts to undo that harmful action does not harm F2Pool, they just neutralize their attempt. Whereas in PoS consensus, any attempts by F2Pool to perform a harmful action would result in them losing their wealth.

jjallen 9y ago

Having a huge mining pool is super lucrative. Why would you want to mess with your underlying cryptocurrency and threaten your income if you're a mining pool?

homakov 9y ago
Incentives dont matter, any centralized entity has no incentive to do bad things about their system yet here we are.
- jjallen 9y ago
  In most centralized entities, interests are conflicted. With mining, the value of the income is directly determined by the price of the cryptocurrency.
  - homakov 9y ago
    There are other incentives beyond most obvious ones. E.g. hijacked miner could attack to pump another currency (crypto/fiat) the miner holds. Incentives are out of equation when you speak of fault tolerance. Incentives are not calculatable. Only "tolerance" (# of tolerable byzantine nodes) matters. And that's 2 for eth and btc. TWO.