21 ms·

Ethereum on Amazon Managed Blockchain

72 points by bpierre 6y ago

forgotmysn 6y ago
genius move from amazon. correct me if im wrong, this looks like a blockchain backend as a service?
- pantelisk 6y ago
  But why are we celebrating centralization of systems that have "decentralization" as their biggest selling point?
  - pjc50 6y ago
    It makes the numbers go up!
  - chrisco255 6y ago
    I'm not sure we're celebrating it. It's something to be noted. Some applications might find it useful, for running data analysis on the blockchain, but I don't foresee a majority of ETH validators running on this service. Best to avoid Amazon in general given their propensity for censorship.
  - aeturnum 6y ago
    How is one more vendor offering to run a blockchain vm centralization? It's just a hosting service.
  - forgotmysn 6y ago
    amazon getting into crypto adds a ton of credibility from an outsider's perspective. even if you're not a fan of amazon, this should have a positive impact on crypto as a whole.
- justjonathan 6y ago
  This is basically half of ankr’s business. They do back and block chain for large companies as well as start ups, and even PCs that want to stake their tokens.
sputknick 6y ago
Just did some quick back of the envelope calculations on profit from staking using this. At current price/rewards it would be just breakeven. Probably better suited to some corporate use case where you are more interested in avoiding fees rather than trying to make money from staking.
1996 6y ago
This is going to be big - blockchain and smart contracts as a service, that's the new "mobile apps"
- throw03172019 6y ago
  Expensive though. Remember when consumers were tough on spending $0.99 for an app? Imagine them seeing $100 gas fees.
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
  - 1996 6y ago
    Many chains are compatible with ETH. Check AVAX if you are worried about gas fees (BTW I don't have any AVAX, it's just one of the many possibilities) https://docs.avax.network/build/tutorials/smart-contracts/deploy-a-smart-contract-on-avalanche-using-remix-and-metamask https://docs.avax.network/build/tutorials/smart-contracts/de...
  - lottin 6y ago
    People pay $100 fees all the time in return for goods and services that provide some utility to them. The problem is "blockchains" don't seem to provide much utility to anybody at all.
    - nivertech 6y ago
      The gas is paid in ETH, which is only backed by 30c each (even less if you count premine). julia> 100.00 tethers / (1670.27 tethers / $0.30 ) 0.017961167954881545 So in real terms the current gas fees are just 1.8c ;) And yes, there are people and smart contracts who are today paying 1670.27 tethers to get control of 1 ETH. Even worse there are people who are paying 1670.27 real US dollars for the same, but it will not last for long. Ethereum ICO funding created a huge incentive misalignment between investors and users. The ETH was crowdfunded as the "fuel for the worldwide computer", kind of AWS Credits, but in reality it was a stake/shares in an Ethereum mainnet network.
rfd4sgmk8u 6y ago
So now the ETH2 folks will have to coordinate with Amazon in getting that managed service migrated to PoS? How do we know that this wont be like ElasticSearch, in that Amazon runs its own custom ETH1 chain for its customers forever? Another reason to doubt that ETH2 is actually going to be a thing sometime before the heat death of the universe.
- wmf 6y ago
  Why would AWS have more clout than the whole rest of the Ethereum ecosystem?
  - rfd4sgmk8u 6y ago
    They dont, however, they may end up becoming their own ethereum ecosystem.
  - WJW 6y ago
    AWS probably has more money than the rest of the Ethereum ecosystem? Anyway, even if they turn out not to have more clout it could still end up as an ecosystem split where some will migrate to ETH2 and some will stay on the AWS managed ETH1 version.
    - wmf 6y ago
      "Amazon Managed Blockchain ... automates Ethereum software upgrades"
  - thinkmassive 6y ago
    It's conceivable that over half of all Ethereum nodes could be running on AWS in the near future. Looks like 41% right now: https://www.ethernodes.org/networkType/Hosting https://www.ethernodes.org/networkType/Hosting
    - wmf 6y ago
      And yet, 85% of geth nodes are running recent versions. The idea that AWS is going to force people into running old software is a conspiracy theory.
thinkingkong 6y ago
I went to try out a friends dapp based lottery pool. To transfer 500$ into the pool I had to convert my tokens then pay around 150$ in gas fees to get it in there, then another 150$ to get it out. So, while Im a believer in distributed systems, we got some work to do.
- pjc50 6y ago
  You're right, those fees aren't transferring nearly enough money to early adopters. It could probably be made to emit more CO2 along the way too.
- X6S1x6Okd1st 6y ago
  Yeah gas fees are insane, more and more stuff need to happen on L2. and ETH2 can't come fast enough.
  - chrisco255 6y ago
    Optimistic rollups in the short-term, but I'm very hopeful for EVM zkRollups in the next 6 months: https://zksync.io/faq/intro.html https://zksync.io/faq/intro.html
    - rglullis 6y ago
      Loopring (https://exchange.loopring.io https://exchange.loopring.io) is already here, also based on zk-rollups.
      - chrisco255 6y ago
        This is correct, but Loopring can only do basic trades. It can't run arbitrary Solidity code...yet. zkSync, that I linked above, is working on bringing Solidity and the Ethereum VM to zkRollups. They claim they can pull it off by this summer. Many DeFi projects, including Loopring, invested in zkSync as a result. I'm hoping they pull it off.
  - jereees 6y ago
Off 6y ago
I'm not sure about this. It is optimistic to see big actors getting into Ethereum but i don't think we should be happy about it. A "centralized" decentralized network running on Amazon servers? Are we learning from the past or are we repeating the same mistakes again?
- cs702 6y ago
  I think it's a positive. If large institutions replace chunks of their legacy financial infrastructure with decentralized, lower-cost infrastructure running over large, distributed blockchains (Bitcoin, Ethereum), we would all be better off.
- DennisP 6y ago
  This isn't about running Ethereum on Amazon servers. They're not talking about mining or staking. This is about making it easy to connect corporate networks to the public Ethereum chain. It's a full node, so it's talking directly to the p2p network instead of sending your transactions through some third-party provider like Infura, but it's not producing blocks.
- wmf 6y ago
  Note that Infura is far worse and has existed for years. https://coinmarketcap.com/alexandria/article/a-deep-dive-into-infrastructure-centralization-in-ethereum https://coinmarketcap.com/alexandria/article/a-deep-dive-int... https://www.coindesk.com/the-race-is-on-to-replace-ethereums-most-centralized-layer https://www.coindesk.com/the-race-is-on-to-replace-ethereums...
faeyanpiraat 6y ago
Well, ETH prices didn’t seem to react to this noticeably. Do you guys know what are some events that reliably move the needle?
- 1996 6y ago
  Currently, ETH is in big trouble: delay on the POS (I don't think it'll be ready before 2022), new binary compatible chains that will allow everyone to move on if ETH2 fails. Also the ETH futures recently introduced will initially push the price down, like they did for BTC.
  - DennisP 6y ago
    Just to clarify that a bit, PoS is running in production right now with 100K validators and $5 billion staked, with four independent client implementations. But for now it's running in parallel with the old chain, which might not merge in until next year. In the meantime, lots of layer-2 stuff is getting rolled out this year.
ruined 6y ago
given amazon's historical strategy of attack against open source platforms and resulting trail of dead, this does not bode well for eth. i still expect the price to jump in anticipation
- SahAssar 6y ago
  Not saying amazon's way of interacting with OSS has been great, but which ones have actually died?
cyphertruck 6y ago
Instead of reading this press release, please read this seminal article from 2001 rebutting it: https://nakamotoinstitute.org/trusted-third-parties/ https://nakamotoinstitute.org/trusted-third-parties/ “Amazon managed blockchain” is an amazing phrase. All three words are wrong. “Blockchain” is a distributed technology created specifically for censorship resistance. A “managed blockchain” should just be replaced with a database. Databases are faster & cheaper. Meanwhile, Amazon is a company that has engaged in censorship many times over the years. And that’s not even addressing the issues with ethereum.
- vmception 6y ago
  The publisher censored Dr. Seuss by ceasing to publish it. Bad habit to conflate one company's own choice as a statement on society and actual consensus. The only way you would have done that is by having a social circle that manipulates your feelings about "cancel culture". You should clear your cookies if you are that easy of a mark.
  - cyphertruck 6y ago
    I wasn't making a statement on society, I was pointing out that Amazon has and can censor. There are many examples, going back to banning wikileaks that resulted in them having to accept bitcoin in donations — and now they never need donations again. Bitcoin routed around Amazon’s censorship. But historically, when you are supporting censorship, you’re not on the right side of history. Bitcoin is fixing this.
    - vmception 6y ago
      Ah okay, I had seen other discussions with similar writings, I stand corrected about your intended predilections
  - _throwawayyyyyy 6y ago
    what the heck with dr seuss? get your culture war BS outta here.
- 6y ago
plattyp 6y ago
Hopefully IBM can offer consulting service for implementing apps built on top of this
- LittlePeter 6y ago
  And I hope an Oracle database is part of their recommended solution.
bingdig 6y ago
Does anyone use AWS or other cloud providers to mine crypto? Can't imagine it's profitable today, but wondering if there was anybody leveraging that in the early days to mine without buying a bunch of equipment.
- rabf 6y ago
  https://www.nicehash.com/marketplace https://www.nicehash.com/marketplace

72 points by bpierre 6y ago

forgotmysn 6y ago

genius move from amazon. correct me if im wrong, this looks like a blockchain backend as a service?

pantelisk 6y ago
But why are we celebrating centralization of systems that have "decentralization" as their biggest selling point?
- pjc50 6y ago
  It makes the numbers go up!
- chrisco255 6y ago
  I'm not sure we're celebrating it. It's something to be noted. Some applications might find it useful, for running data analysis on the blockchain, but I don't foresee a majority of ETH validators running on this service. Best to avoid Amazon in general given their propensity for censorship.
- aeturnum 6y ago
  How is one more vendor offering to run a blockchain vm centralization? It's just a hosting service.
- forgotmysn 6y ago
  amazon getting into crypto adds a ton of credibility from an outsider's perspective. even if you're not a fan of amazon, this should have a positive impact on crypto as a whole.
justjonathan 6y ago
This is basically half of ankr’s business. They do back and block chain for large companies as well as start ups, and even PCs that want to stake their tokens.

sputknick 6y ago

Just did some quick back of the envelope calculations on profit from staking using this. At current price/rewards it would be just breakeven. Probably better suited to some corporate use case where you are more interested in avoiding fees rather than trying to make money from staking.

1996 6y ago

This is going to be big - blockchain and smart contracts as a service, that's the new "mobile apps"

throw03172019 6y ago
Expensive though. Remember when consumers were tough on spending $0.99 for an app? Imagine them seeing $100 gas fees.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- 1996 6y ago
  Many chains are compatible with ETH. Check AVAX if you are worried about gas fees (BTW I don't have any AVAX, it's just one of the many possibilities) https://docs.avax.network/build/tutorials/smart-contracts/deploy-a-smart-contract-on-avalanche-using-remix-and-metamask https://docs.avax.network/build/tutorials/smart-contracts/de...
- lottin 6y ago
  People pay $100 fees all the time in return for goods and services that provide some utility to them. The problem is "blockchains" don't seem to provide much utility to anybody at all.
  - nivertech 6y ago
    The gas is paid in ETH, which is only backed by 30c each (even less if you count premine). julia> 100.00 tethers / (1670.27 tethers / $0.30 ) 0.017961167954881545 So in real terms the current gas fees are just 1.8c ;) And yes, there are people and smart contracts who are today paying 1670.27 tethers to get control of 1 ETH. Even worse there are people who are paying 1670.27 real US dollars for the same, but it will not last for long. Ethereum ICO funding created a huge incentive misalignment between investors and users. The ETH was crowdfunded as the "fuel for the worldwide computer", kind of AWS Credits, but in reality it was a stake/shares in an Ethereum mainnet network.

rfd4sgmk8u 6y ago

So now the ETH2 folks will have to coordinate with Amazon in getting that managed service migrated to PoS? How do we know that this wont be like ElasticSearch, in that Amazon runs its own custom ETH1 chain for its customers forever? Another reason to doubt that ETH2 is actually going to be a thing sometime before the heat death of the universe.

wmf 6y ago
Why would AWS have more clout than the whole rest of the Ethereum ecosystem?
- rfd4sgmk8u 6y ago
  They dont, however, they may end up becoming their own ethereum ecosystem.
- WJW 6y ago
  AWS probably has more money than the rest of the Ethereum ecosystem? Anyway, even if they turn out not to have more clout it could still end up as an ecosystem split where some will migrate to ETH2 and some will stay on the AWS managed ETH1 version.
  - wmf 6y ago
    "Amazon Managed Blockchain ... automates Ethereum software upgrades"
- thinkmassive 6y ago
  It's conceivable that over half of all Ethereum nodes could be running on AWS in the near future. Looks like 41% right now: https://www.ethernodes.org/networkType/Hosting https://www.ethernodes.org/networkType/Hosting
  - wmf 6y ago
    And yet, 85% of geth nodes are running recent versions. The idea that AWS is going to force people into running old software is a conspiracy theory.

thinkingkong 6y ago

I went to try out a friends dapp based lottery pool. To transfer 500$ into the pool I had to convert my tokens then pay around 150$ in gas fees to get it in there, then another 150$ to get it out. So, while Im a believer in distributed systems, we got some work to do.

pjc50 6y ago
You're right, those fees aren't transferring nearly enough money to early adopters. It could probably be made to emit more CO2 along the way too.
X6S1x6Okd1st 6y ago
Yeah gas fees are insane, more and more stuff need to happen on L2. and ETH2 can't come fast enough.
- chrisco255 6y ago
  Optimistic rollups in the short-term, but I'm very hopeful for EVM zkRollups in the next 6 months: https://zksync.io/faq/intro.html https://zksync.io/faq/intro.html
  - rglullis 6y ago
    Loopring (https://exchange.loopring.io https://exchange.loopring.io) is already here, also based on zk-rollups.
    - chrisco255 6y ago
      This is correct, but Loopring can only do basic trades. It can't run arbitrary Solidity code...yet. zkSync, that I linked above, is working on bringing Solidity and the Ethereum VM to zkRollups. They claim they can pull it off by this summer. Many DeFi projects, including Loopring, invested in zkSync as a result. I'm hoping they pull it off.
- jereees 6y ago

Off 6y ago

I'm not sure about this. It is optimistic to see big actors getting into Ethereum but i don't think we should be happy about it. A "centralized" decentralized network running on Amazon servers? Are we learning from the past or are we repeating the same mistakes again?

cs702 6y ago
I think it's a positive. If large institutions replace chunks of their legacy financial infrastructure with decentralized, lower-cost infrastructure running over large, distributed blockchains (Bitcoin, Ethereum), we would all be better off.
DennisP 6y ago
This isn't about running Ethereum on Amazon servers. They're not talking about mining or staking. This is about making it easy to connect corporate networks to the public Ethereum chain. It's a full node, so it's talking directly to the p2p network instead of sending your transactions through some third-party provider like Infura, but it's not producing blocks.
wmf 6y ago
Note that Infura is far worse and has existed for years. https://coinmarketcap.com/alexandria/article/a-deep-dive-into-infrastructure-centralization-in-ethereum https://coinmarketcap.com/alexandria/article/a-deep-dive-int... https://www.coindesk.com/the-race-is-on-to-replace-ethereums-most-centralized-layer https://www.coindesk.com/the-race-is-on-to-replace-ethereums...

faeyanpiraat 6y ago

Well, ETH prices didn’t seem to react to this noticeably. Do you guys know what are some events that reliably move the needle?

1996 6y ago
Currently, ETH is in big trouble: delay on the POS (I don't think it'll be ready before 2022), new binary compatible chains that will allow everyone to move on if ETH2 fails. Also the ETH futures recently introduced will initially push the price down, like they did for BTC.
- DennisP 6y ago
  Just to clarify that a bit, PoS is running in production right now with 100K validators and $5 billion staked, with four independent client implementations. But for now it's running in parallel with the old chain, which might not merge in until next year. In the meantime, lots of layer-2 stuff is getting rolled out this year.

ruined 6y ago

given amazon's historical strategy of attack against open source platforms and resulting trail of dead, this does not bode well for eth. i still expect the price to jump in anticipation

SahAssar 6y ago
Not saying amazon's way of interacting with OSS has been great, but which ones have actually died?

cyphertruck 6y ago

Instead of reading this press release, please read this seminal article from 2001 rebutting it: https://nakamotoinstitute.org/trusted-third-parties/ https://nakamotoinstitute.org/trusted-third-parties/ “Amazon managed blockchain” is an amazing phrase. All three words are wrong. “Blockchain” is a distributed technology created specifically for censorship resistance. A “managed blockchain” should just be replaced with a database. Databases are faster & cheaper. Meanwhile, Amazon is a company that has engaged in censorship many times over the years. And that’s not even addressing the issues with ethereum.

vmception 6y ago
The publisher censored Dr. Seuss by ceasing to publish it. Bad habit to conflate one company's own choice as a statement on society and actual consensus. The only way you would have done that is by having a social circle that manipulates your feelings about "cancel culture". You should clear your cookies if you are that easy of a mark.
- cyphertruck 6y ago
  I wasn't making a statement on society, I was pointing out that Amazon has and can censor. There are many examples, going back to banning wikileaks that resulted in them having to accept bitcoin in donations — and now they never need donations again. Bitcoin routed around Amazon’s censorship. But historically, when you are supporting censorship, you’re not on the right side of history. Bitcoin is fixing this.
  - vmception 6y ago
    Ah okay, I had seen other discussions with similar writings, I stand corrected about your intended predilections
- _throwawayyyyyy 6y ago
  what the heck with dr seuss? get your culture war BS outta here.
6y ago

plattyp 6y ago

Hopefully IBM can offer consulting service for implementing apps built on top of this

LittlePeter 6y ago
And I hope an Oracle database is part of their recommended solution.

bingdig 6y ago

Does anyone use AWS or other cloud providers to mine crypto? Can't imagine it's profitable today, but wondering if there was anybody leveraging that in the early days to mine without buying a bunch of equipment.

rabf 6y ago
https://www.nicehash.com/marketplace https://www.nicehash.com/marketplace