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Vitalik escalates ETH 2.0 merge as miners plan a 51% attack

rawtxapp 6y ago
As someone who uses both BTC and ETH and who likes both, this is one of the reason why people prefer Bitcoin over Ethereum. The reality is that the energy used to secure the Bitcoin blockchain (or the energy "wasted" according to many here) is important and makes a 51% attack prohibitively costly. While Vitalik coming with this potential solution is great, the reverse of that coin is that the developers have very significant control on the blockchain which is far from ideal.
- undefined1 6y ago
  is this also an issue with Ethereum competitors like Cardano?
  - hanniabu 6y ago
    Cardano is a whole slew of different issues lol
    - gruez 6y ago
      elaborate?
  - jki275 6y ago
    Not with ADA or Tezos. Bottom line, ADA is a proof of stake chain. It is upgraded in place based on proposals and consensus of stake pools. Same thing with Tezos. ADA hasn't fully rolled out all the features of the ETH blockchain yet -- I believe we're a couple of months away from the smart contract upgrade.
- DennisP 6y ago
  Developers can't do anything the users don't want. They can't make people adopt the new software. The miners are losing here because everybody else in the ecosystem wants proof-of-stake and 1559, including users, ETH holders, and app developers.
  - chillacy 6y ago
    Absolutely, all the stuff built on ETH (defi, automated exchanges, nfts) can't truly take off when gas fees can cost 20-80 USD per action. There's already a blockchain that acts as a store of value, the world doesn't need a second bitcoin.
    - hanniabu 6y ago
      L2 (second layer) solutions like Optimism will fix the scaling issue. It's live with a limited Synthetix release now and will be open to the general public on the 15th. Many large projects including Uniswap, Compound, and Chainlink have said they will be migrating to Optimism L2. It's very simple to do (little to no changes needed) and with big names committing it seems to be the L2 of choice. WalletConnect, Metamask, and Coinbase have also said they'll be supporting it with Metamask and WalletConnect integration complete and WalletConnect in beta testing.
      - SubiculumCode 6y ago
        It seems to me that MATIC is making a good play as well.
        casi 6y ago
        Matic is not an L2 though, it is a side chain. The reason L2s like optimism are exciting is because they inherit the security of ethereum mainnet. (matic has its own consensus mechanisms).
        SubiculumCode 6y ago
        Matic Polygon is a L2 aggregator. https://www.coindesk.com/matic-network-polygon-targets-ethereum-layer-2-woes https://www.coindesk.com/matic-network-polygon-targets-ether...
        hanniabu 6y ago
        Optimism also isn't rent seeking with their own coin. All gas is still paid in ETH.
- bpodgursky 6y ago
  The 51% attack here is only because PoW hasn't been completely eliminated yet... once ETH is on PoS, this attack won't be possible.
  - jki275 6y ago
    Sure it will. It will just involve 51% of the stake pools instead of 51% of the miners.
    - bibabaloo 6y ago
      It's a little different with proof of stake. If there's a minority group that holds a large stake that "attacks" the blockchain against the majority's wishes, the majority group can decide to roll back and blacklist the minority group. It's much more difficult to blacklist hash power in this same way.
      - trhway 6y ago
        >the majority group can decide to roll back and blacklist the minority group. It's much more difficult to blacklist hash power in this same way. and that is supposedly advantage of pos over pow? In philosophical view the pow -> pos means taking power away from the more technical and giving it to the more business oriented group/approach. That has happened to Internet for example, and I just personally dont like such transitions.
      - jki275 6y ago
        That’s not how it works. The people who hold the majority of the stake are the majority, not the minority.
        casi 6y ago
        There is a difference (with the introduction of slashing and user activated soft forks) in 51% attacks that revert finalized blocks. In PoW this type of attack would become cheaper as it persists, in PoS we have some defense that keeps making this attack expensive. On top of that the costs of attack are much greater in PoS than PoW, making these attacks much harder to begin with. https://vitalik.ca/general/2020/11/06/pos2020.html https://vitalik.ca/general/2020/11/06/pos2020.html
- hanniabu 6y ago
  > that the developers have very significant control on the blockchain The case for BTC in this regard is no different from ETH. In both cases developers put together an upgrade, then miners can either upgrade or not.
  - rawtxapp 6y ago
    Except in this case, this is going against presumably 51% of the miners and changes take much longer to implement and activate on Bitcoin (taproot activation for example will be done over a very long period and needs a very high threshold). Going from PoW to PoS in such a small timeframe is pretty aggressive no matter how you look at it. As a user, I really hope it works out without major issues.
    - hanniabu 6y ago
      > and changes take much longer to implement and activate on Bitcoin That's a funny way of saying BTC doesn't innovate. > Going from PoW to PoS in such a small timeframe is pretty aggressive no matter how you look at it. It's been the plan for years. I first heard of it in 2017 and if I'm not mistaken I think it was also in the whitepaper. So it's neither coming out of the blue or an aggressive timeframe.
      - rawtxapp 6y ago
        > That's a funny way of saying BTC doesn't innovate. Or another way of saying you can expect some stability (and majority consensus) when there's more than a trillion dollars worth of value at stake. It's been discussed for a longtime, yes, but the expectation is that it would roll out in phases over the next year or two, not rushed out because of a potential 51% attack.
        hanniabu 6y ago
        You say rushed but it's not rushed at all. It's simply just a priority change.
    - 6y ago
Bluestein 6y ago
This could get really ugly. (Not only per se, but, also, as it really shows how "centralized" these suposedly decentralized systems are ... ... and -this- could have consequences.)
- hanniabu 6y ago
  They are decentralized. This move is more of a risk mitigation strategy than risk of a 51% attack. There's also certain risks from miners at the transition block because they know the exact block it will happen at.
- mempko 6y ago
  it's centralized in both directions. Small development team and small group of powerful miners.
  - hanniabu 6y ago
    What are you talking about, it has the most developers of any project.
    - mempko 6y ago
      Pareto Distribution. Most of the developers did very little. https://github.com/bitcoin/bitcoin/graphs/contributors https://github.com/bitcoin/bitcoin/graphs/contributors
- shp0ngle 6y ago
  ETH, and any cryptocurrency for that matter, has never been “decentralized” in terms of development. There are always a few guys making all major decisions, and it’s hard to oppose them other than making a forked currency.
  - rauljordan2020 6y ago
    This is not true. I am one of the maintainers of https://github.com/prysmaticlabs/prysm https://github.com/prysmaticlabs/prysm, one of the main client implementations of eth2 today. My team is unaffiliated with the Ethereum Foundation. There are also 3 other client implementations of the protocol that are very robust and done by independent teams in different parts of the world. We also can't force users to accept all our changes, and development on ETH's infrastructure has indeed been trending towards more decentralization. There are few blockchains out there today with more than 1, production-quality client implementation.
moralestapia 6y ago
Not trying to be snarky but Vitalik itself is ETH's 51% attack ... What's the point of decentralized cryptocurrency when it falls down on the hands of one person.
- DennisP 6y ago
  At this point Vitalik is one researcher among many. He's taken care to remove himself from the "benevolent dictator" role he had at first. He is very productive though, and the other researchers and devs tend to find his ideas convincing.
  - moralestapia 6y ago
    "A group of researchers" still doesn't feel like decentralized to me.
    - snissn 6y ago
      miners vs coders is very decentralized to me :) let the miners have their own chain!
    - hanniabu 6y ago
      You're pulling threads here. There's a lot of people involved. And then they still need to convince wallet developers and miners. And then once there's the move to PoS they'll also need to convince the users and stakers (miners removed from equation).
    - wizzwizz4 6y ago
      “A single species” doesn't feel decentralised, either. You're pumping your intuition rather than considering reality directly.
  - xiphias2 6y ago
    If you look at what Pieter Wuelle is doing, he's also doing amazing work, but when it comes to make decisions, he goes to the background even if he has an opinion. I don't see the same thing happening to Vitalik. I'm not saying it's a problem, as Ethereum is a different network with different advantages and disadvantages, but he still looks like the final decision maker to me at this point (which is OK for me).
yawaworht1978 6y ago
Decentralized 51% attack... Not the first very profound eth conflict.
- Bluestein 6y ago
  Anybody remember Eth Classic, etc.?
  - moralestapia 6y ago
    That "little thing" when they rolled out contracts and pretty much showed how easy it was to manipulate the currency at their whim ...
    - Bluestein 6y ago
      You know. Just a pesky detail.
    - Scoundreller 6y ago
      (This new) code is (the new) law.
      - Bluestein 6y ago
        Indeed. (You can really tell this is the case the minute "contracts" - IRL backed by "law" and all its affordances - actually became backed by -code- within this new paradigm ... ... wherein, incidentally, the VM running the on-chain contract has become the "judge", come to notice.)
typest 6y ago
I'm not an expert, but if 51% of the existing hashpower doesn't want a change, it sounds less a 51% attack and more like miners voting against something that isn't in their interest. The whole point of blockchains is that the incentives are supposed to be aligned between miners and users. If that isn't the case here, it sounds like a problem.
- georgyo 6y ago
  Crypto miners and and crypto users are aligned in the same way banks and customers are aligned.
- chizhik-pyzhik 6y ago
  It is a problem. That's a big reason for moving from proof-of-work to proof-of-stake- to more directly make the _holders_ of Ethereum in charge of the chain. It's a difficult thing to do, though. Hashpower based mining is easier to get going. Proof of stake has issues like the nothing-at-stake problem, where theoretically you could stake-mine on multiple chains: https://ethereum.stackexchange.com/questions/2402/what-exactly-is-the-nothing-at-stake-problem https://ethereum.stackexchange.com/questions/2402/what-exact...
  - hertzrat 6y ago
    Isn’t half of our current money supply controlled by 1% of people? If the asset holders controlled things, why wouldn’t they just demand everyone else hand over their cash? https://www.cbsnews.com/news/richest-1-percent-control-more-than-half-of-all-wealth/ https://www.cbsnews.com/news/richest-1-percent-control-more-...
    - drcode 6y ago
      (1) even a 51% attack can't generate fake transactions to transfer that money (2) social power with blockchains (i.e. having people's ears on the social networks) is far more important than $$ power: If nobody wants to install and use your blockchain, no amount of $$ can fix that.
AzzieElbab 6y ago
I actually like all things crypto, but why does this tech have to suck so much
- hanniabu 6y ago
  It's getting there, just growing pains as it goes through cycles of innovation and improvements.
- chrisco255 6y ago
  Because this tech is not just about tech, but also game theory, consensus and economic incentives to align completely disconnected parties with completely different motives in a trustless manner.
  - AzzieElbab 6y ago
    I think economic incentives are misaligned when it comes to providing a valuable open platform. Everything is way too expensive on blockchain.
omginternets 6y ago
Why is it a good thing to make ETH deflationary? Don't you want people to spend it?
- tom_mellior 6y ago
  [removed incorrect post, thanks for the correction]
  - rawtxapp 6y ago
    I think you're confusing deflationary with depreciation. Deflationary currency means over time, there's less of it, so if the demand stays stable, you'd expect the price to go up.
- Sargos 6y ago
  People are never going to be using ETH as a currency. They would use stablecoins like DAI pegged to USD or a basket of assets. A high price of ETH as an asset creates a higher security level for Ethereum the blockchain. The ecosystem of projects, apps, protocols, organizations, etc on Ethereum is healthier when the blockchain is guaranteed secure and stable for everyone to use.
- hanniabu 6y ago
  It's not about making it deflationary, that's just a side effect of needing to burn the fees for the fee stabilization mechanism. I forget the details exactly, but if you don't burn them then miners can still do funny business.
- meowkit 6y ago
  One of the biggest mistakes of cryptocurrency was calling it cryptocurrency. Distributed Ledgers have multitudes of use cases. One of them is as a currency, but you don't need the base layer to be a currency. ETH doesn't need to be spent as much as its needed to act as a quantitative measure of ownership and buy in. You can build a currency on the second layer, which has been done.
  - 6y ago
chucknthem 6y ago
Reminds me of the bitcoin cash fork and segwit drama in 2017.
jaimehrubiks 6y ago
Regardless of the current issues with the updates, gas prices, different opinions on the community, devs vs miners vs users... Am I the only one who thinks people underestimate Ethereum and its EVM invention? In 2013 this guy (who I think is a visionary) wrote a document with a proposal that led to the creation of a world-wide turing-complete distributed computer. And still, people are just starting to realize its potential. This month a layer-2 solution called optimism will launch a virtual machine called OVM (optimism vm) on top of ethereum smart contracts that can solve most of the current scalability issues (and there are other solutions being tested in parallel: zkrollups...). We are also starting to realize the potential of Dex and Defi (distributed exchanges and finance), DAOs (distributed organizations), NFT (non-fungible tokens) and a bunch of things more that 7 years after are appearing out of thin air. So even if Ethereum wasn't updated at all (although, we probably all agree that PoW is not environmental friendly and should be replaced with a better alternative: PoS) it could still thrive in the long term thanks to its most fundamental design choices (turing-complete...). I am truly amazed by this technology and Vitalik. I wish I knew a little bit more of the underlying fundamentals. What do you think?
- numbsafari 6y ago
  Never underestimate the efficiency with which money launderers and organized crime are able to innovate and adapt.
  - hanniabu 6y ago
    It's easy to spot the people not knowledgeable in crypto when they just parrot the media's fear mongering narratives.
    - Aeolun 6y ago
      It’s easier for me to see the utility in any given random HN post, than in any form of cryptocurrency.
- Sargos 6y ago
  It really is amazing when you understand the capabilities and speed of iterations of the growing use cases of this new shared trust machine. DeFi, NFTs, DAOs, so many different ecosystems currently being built cooperatively by hundreds of different companies and project teams. It's almost a force of nature.
AaronFriel 6y ago
> There are a wide variety of benefits to this proposal, such as potentially making Ethereum deflationary Interesting that this is framed as a benefit.
- Sargos 6y ago
  A high price of ETH as an asset creates a higher security level for Ethereum the blockchain. The ecosystem of projects, apps, protocols, organizations, etc on Ethereum is healthier when the blockchain is guaranteed secure and stable for everyone to use. It's a benefit to everyone.
  - wizzwizz4 6y ago
    Except people who want to use ETH as a currency, rather than an asset. If we're going to have inflation or deflation, pick inflation; that way, you can actually spend the stuff without FOMO.
    - Sargos 6y ago
      ETH is money but it's not currency. It's not meant to be used to buy everyday goods and services.
      - ntr-- 6y ago
        It is meant to be spent as gas in order to compensate for the energy costs of the computations in its smart-contracts. Why expend some amount of ETH building and executing products when you can just HODL and wait for the price to go up? Additionally, ease of spending drives up adoption which is a clear benefit to any currency.
        Sargos 6y ago
        >Why expend some amount of ETH building and executing products when you can just HODL and wait for the price to go up? Most people aren't going to have a choice. ETH is required to be spent when making transactions and using dapps, NFTs, etc. Even L2s like Optimism, zkSync, etc will be spending ETH when writing to the L1 even if the end users are shielded from that. There is a built in economy that burns ETH so demand won't be a problem.
SirensOfTitan 6y ago
I think schisms are healthy, democratic strategies that lead to resiliency over time. It requires interest groups to play their cards, some will succeed independently, some will fail, and often the schism won't last (the groups will reconcile and merge back together). Others see conflict, and label that as "bad," but this just seems like democracy at work. Democracy is messy and looks chaotic to the uninitiated, but all order looks like chaos to the uninitiated. With that, I don't see blockchain governance as necessarily "decentralized," but anarchistic (non-pejoratively). Anarchistic governance can lead to complex institutions and centralization, the difference between it and traditional central organization is that participation is always completely voluntary. Most people are OK with letting the Ethereum foundation run the show most of the time, and that's totally compatible with decentralization. When people disagree, they typically organize into interest groups to either convince the current guard to consider their interests, or they schism (in this case).
crazypython 6y ago
The issue here seems to be that instead of giving miners the fees, they are destroyed, creating a deflationary spiral, which helps speculators' wallets (who want the money supply to shrink), while hurting miners' wallets. It helps ETH holders.
gus_massa 6y ago
If the fee are going to be (partially) burned, can the miners just ask that everyone pays the fees by a side channel? Perhaps make a smart contract that holds the same value of the fee until the transaction is included. The miners can just ensure to include both or neither, and get paid.
- rawtxapp 6y ago
  You can still tip a miner if you want to. Only thing burned is the "base fee".
  - gus_massa 6y ago
    So it's as easy as adding `if $tip >= $base` somewhere in source code of the program they are running in the nodes. (You can call it a soft fork if you wish.)
- drcode 6y ago
  The game theory with the EIP1559 changes is that there will be ample space in blocks to put in transactions, and there will (roughly, under normal circumstances) be just enough transactions in the pool to fill each block. So the miner only has the options of either (A) filling the block with transactions to earn tips or (B) chose to be hostile and generate an empty block, just to have the next miner put the most profitable transactions in the followup block.
  - latchkey 6y ago
    The blocks will be variable sized and can still fill up. Point #1 and #10 from the image here: https://hackmd.io/@timbeiko/1559-updates/https%3A%2F%2Fhackmd.io%2F%40timbeiko%2F1559-update-004#Economic-Analysis-%F0%9F%93%91 https://hackmd.io/@timbeiko/1559-updates/https%3A%2F%2Fhackm...
    - drcode 6y ago
      Sure, nothing you said really disagrees with my summary.
guiomie 6y ago
It's interesting that miners are protesting EIP-1559 proposal, which is burning away transaction fees as opposed to giving them to miners, while for the last years Eth has focused on completely eliminating miners with proof of stake. Why not protest the latter? What am I missing? Regardless, I sold all my mining equipment 2 years ago when it was clear that Eth was moving to PoS, mining alt-coins wasnt something I was interested in, since except for ETH and BTC, I believe all these chains are inferior.
- drcode 6y ago
  Oh, there will definitely be an ugly fight once we get close to removing POW altogether. This is part of the reason ethereum has an "ice age" which means the blockchain essentially stops working after a year if the community doesn't approve each new upgrade. But despite this, there will certainly be an "ethereum classic 2" in the near future.
- olouv 6y ago
  One theory is that they have planned to fork when POS does arrive but don’t want to have to rollback upgrades like EIP-1559 as it would negatively impact optics vs. keeping alive the “true original” ETH.
mrkramer 6y ago
Satoshi said "The nature of Bitcoin is such that once version 0.1 was released, the core design was set in stone for the rest of its lifetime."[1] Vitalik going from POW to POS is nonsense for any crypto electronic cash currency because people can not trust it if core design changes from time to time. Vitalik will probably come back again to POW after miners calm down. [1] https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=195.msg1611#msg1611 https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=195.msg1611#msg1611
- viklove 6y ago
  > Vitalik going from POW to POS is nonsense Being able to change for the better is not nonsense, it's vital to the survival and stability of a coin. The #1 complaint about Bitcoin (especially on HN) is its excessive use of power. Moving to POS solves this problem. Moving to POS allows ETH to scale transaction processing where BTC cannot. Miners are obviously angry because they spent millions (probably billions) on GPUs in warehouses to mine ETH, and this is threatening their profits. They're not the significant party when it comes to talking about ETH though. The users and larger ecosystem make up the significant parties. POS will happen. ETH 2.0 will happen. This is why ETH is better than BTC -- it has a leader like Vitalik who is open to changes and knows how to lead implementation. If miners want to throw a tantrum in the process, so be it. We'll just leave them behind.
  - mrkramer 6y ago
    >The #1 complaint about Bitcoin (especially on HN) is its excessive use of power. And how much power does Google or Facebook consume? How much power does each Google and Facebook click take? There are good power sources like renewables and nuclear. Power is not a problem. And I'm not sure POS is a good solution because Satoshi would've used it or would've switched to it.
    - wmf 6y ago
      If relativity is such a good theory, why didn't Newton use it?
    - 6y ago
whywhywhywhy 6y ago
Looking at ETH in terms of wallets interacting with dapps, NFT, uniswap, etc it all honestly feels like magic. Obviously the high gas makes it feel a lot less like magic when every button click is 30-100$ but really this all gives me so much hope for a better post-mobile app based internet. I was so cynical for a long time about where tech was heading but this gives me hope that in 10 years we might be in a better place owned by the people and with better monetization outside of megacorps.
- Rapzid 6y ago
  It's amazing but yeah, 40 dollars to swap tokens... You could almost imagine it all being kept track of on paper or punch cards with people manually carrying out every transaction for that price LOL. I'm looking forward to smart contracts costing pennies per transaction. It's going to be a game changer for the utility of it all.
  - thekyle 6y ago
    Are the high gas fees something that proof of stake will solve?
    - casi 6y ago
      The general idea is Layer 2s solve high gas. Most users will be using apps that run on a layer 2 and will make rare trips to the mainnet. The next thing being worked on is onboarding users direct to layer 2, and layer2 interoperability so you can move from one l2 to another You can already use an L2 DEX to exchange tokens (and have been able to for about a year) https://exchange.loopring.io/ https://exchange.loopring.io/ You can send L2 payments with https://zksync.io/ https://zksync.io/ But those are limited to their applications. General purpose L2s arrive this month! with Optimism https://optimismpbc.medium.com/ https://optimismpbc.medium.com/ and to be followed later this year by https://aztec.network/ https://aztec.network/ and others. With those we can redeploy code from mainnet to layer 2. With the apps on layer 2 the transaction fees will be fractions of cents and almost instant and a lot of the programs we have dreamed about but not been able to make become possible at scale. Its an exciting time!
ketamine__ 6y ago
Is anyone using Status? Do they release monthly active user stats?
dnprock 6y ago
Bitcoin, Ethereum, and cryptocurrency spawn a generation of people who worship Austrian economics. This ETH upgrade is making ETH even more deflationary. People are obsessed with price and want to pump the numbers. These wars are not doing anything to advance adoption and bring freedom to people. Crypto builders are pumping the coins under the banners of freedom and decentralization. The problem with crypto is volatility. The whole market moves in one direction or another, usually with Bitcoin. Scarcity is not the only thing that makes up the economy. We need also need inflation. Stop engaging in these ideological wars. Let's fix the problem and drive adoption. https://bitflate.org/post/2020/04/26/we-need-inflationary-cryptocurrency.html https://bitflate.org/post/2020/04/26/we-need-inflationary-cr...
- deleted 6y ago
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- Barrin92 6y ago
  If you already come to the very sane and correct conclusion that deflationary and volatile cryptocurrencies are effectively useless as a means of exchange and as a primary tool to run an economy then you should just ditch decentralized currencies altogether because then you also get rid of the meaningless complications around mining, energy efficiency or user-friendliness and go to a digital central-bank currency directly which actually has the proper tools to do monetary policy and all you need is a database.
  - gruez 6y ago
    >If you already come to the very sane and correct conclusion that deflationary and volatile cryptocurrencies are effectively useless as a means of exchange and as a primary tool to run an economy then [...] What about as a store of value? Gold is still around despite being heavy and hard to transact with.
    - bluecalm 6y ago
      Wanna store value? Buy actual value - that is things that make the wealth. Stocks in major companies, real estate, land in places people want to live in. The concept that buying promises is a good way to store value is a bizarre concept to me.
johndoe42377 6y ago
It is a disgrace to even mention this narcissistic clown here. If we remove all the hype and worshipping he is technically illiterate, the code is a spaghetti crap, which defeats all the principles of Go, and there is no rigorous research, only Twitter bullshitting.
oh_sigh 6y ago
All of these miners are the reason why, if you bought a graphics card 2 years ago, you can sell it for a profit today. So of course, they don't want a system that invalidates their investments in GPUs. The beauty of this system though is that they don't really get a choice. If Vitalik forks ETH into a PoS system, and enough people get behind it - it doesn't matter what the miners say.
- jillesvangurp 6y ago
  The nature of a fork is that the old system doesn't really go away. It's just that most of the economic activity that made it valuable (presumably) is going to move to the new system; so staying behind is kind of pointless. Of course the assumption here is that its current value had anything to do with economic activity (other than people gambling on the price of eth and other tokens). That's about to be validated in the real world. I've been more than a bit underwhelmed by ethereum, which if you separate out the speculative transactions actually doesn't have a whole lot going on in terms of people actually using it for real things. There's a little bit of that but mostly it's just people trying to get rich quickly. Lots of smart contracts idling and generally not doing what they were designed to do, games not really getting played, etc.
Aeolun 6y ago
Every time I read about anything related to cryptocurrency it reads like a high-school opera. With several orders of magnitude more money involved. I really don’t like this whole industry, and I cannot see how anyone would. It’s like a cult.
- Magodo 6y ago
  You seem to have described nations and religions as well. It applies to anything with a large number of interest groups involved
  - Aeolun 6y ago
    To some extend, sure, but it’s much worse in Crypto (in my opinion, of course).
  - sect2k 6y ago
    You are absolutely right, Bitcoin is a like religion, you need to let go of rational thought and have faith, HODL!
- ur-whale 6y ago
  > I really don’t like this whole industry Yet, you're here, reading the article and commenting.
  - Aeolun 6y ago
    Well, I like HN, and I keep hoping that this time, things will be different.
lifeformed 6y ago
> they have even went as far as creating a website Wow, things are getting serious.
- ur-whale 6y ago
  /s there, fixed it for you
rauljordan2020 6y ago
I'm one of the maintainers of one of the implementations of eth2 live today (https://github.com/prysmaticlabs/prysm https://github.com/prysmaticlabs/prysm) and can help offer more context on this. Ethereum proof of stake has been live since December 1st and it currently secures over 6 billion USD worth of value https://beaconcha.in/ https://beaconcha.in/. Currently, this is a chain that lives in parallel to the proof of work chain we know as Ethereum today. The idea is that over this coming year, the entire state of Ethereum will be "merged" into this new chain that uses proof of stake consensus via a docking process. "Escalating the eth2 merge" means there is more expedited work from researchers and developers when it comes to performing this critical decision. Since eth2 consensus is already live and running correctly with a large set of validators, miners cannot censor this new chain and therefore cannot really stop the merge.
- chrisco255 6y ago
  Excellent work on prysmatic! Can you clarify about this "quick merge" proposal? Would the idea be to shift "ETH1" validation to the ETH2 Beacon nodes? At first two chains would be running and be validated by the same nodes but then much later the final merge of Beacon and ETH1 chains would occur? Is that the plan?
- 3np 6y ago
  Do you think the headline is correct in labeling this as a 51% attack? The other argument would be that developers are trying to push through a contentious fork (mostly but not only contested by miners and mining pools), and mining nodes are planning to not adopt the proposed change?
  - proto-n 6y ago
    Afaik there's no plan to attack, they are planning a "show of force", i.e. get more then 51% in a pool for a while without doing anything with the power. This is separate from either adapting or not adapting the fork itself and happens before the fork. The original chain has to be forked either way, with or without eip 1559 because the "ice age" coded into the current version (it's in there for this exact reason). So if the change goes through and some miners decide to block it, there's not going to be an "original chain" and a "fork", but two forks, one supported by devs and minority of miners, and one supported by miner majority.
wyldfire 6y ago
Once a miner makes a capital investment in a particular PoW, their interests are now more diverse than the general interests of the coin. They're vested in that particular PoW.
throwaway4good 6y ago
It sounds like the Ethereum "community" is about decide whether it believes in proof of work or the cult of Vitalik.
- chrisco255 6y ago
  The Ethereum community consists of thousands of application developers, tens of thousands of ETH2 proof of stake validators (who have been operational since December), and millions of users. There's no debate in the ETH community about the shift to proof of stake. It's already half done. We just need to finish the job faster since miners have gotten greedy and fat on $20M a day in transaction fees.
- everfree 6y ago
  The Ethereum dev team has been publicly committed to a PoS transition since the day Ethereum was launched. Anybody not aligned with this switch shouldn't have become a stakeholder in the protocol.
antpls 6y ago
Doesn't Vitalik/the dev team own the "Ethereum" name, which means they decide what get called "Ethereum" ? If there are two versions of the chain, because of a 51% attack or a fork, there always will be only one dev-approved chain called "Ethereum" on the exchanges, and that's what the users will buy.
- pjfin123 6y ago
  I think the Ethereum Foundation owns the trademark.
ur-whale 6y ago
Just read Vitalik's note and - interestingly enough - there isn't a single word about the potential damage to the miners, only how they could attack the proposal. In other words, he's simply considering them an enemy when they've in fact been investing blood and treasure for the past 8 years supporting his brainchild. People may call him a genius, but when they do, they're clearly not talking about his empathy abilities and leadership skills.
- darawk 6y ago
  They've been investing money to make money. They're running a business, not a charity. Changes like these are part of the process of improvement, this is exactly what they signed up for.
  - ur-whale 6y ago
    You're missing my point: yes, they have benefited from the whole thing, no doubt there. But a responsible leader at the very least tries to address the fact that his proposal will throw a major chunk of the ecosystem under the bus and what's worse, on a completely unplanned timeline. And maybe propose mitigating solutions. Instead he immediately paints them as the enemy. Some leader you got there.
    - Hammershaft 6y ago
      I don't know much about Vitalik but I saw him supporting a carbon tax. It might be that he sees mining as a necessary evil to transition from.
- andxor 6y ago
  > they've in fact been investing blood and treasure They have made a tremendous amount of money by investing in his "brainchild". How are they victims?
eptcyka 6y ago
I really hope to see some cheap 6800xt's on eBay soon.
rullelito 6y ago
What? There are political risks with cryptos, and it is not the perfect system? I'm shocked!
Cypher 6y ago
A hard fork isn't going to work when all community and devs don't come along...
jules-jules 6y ago
Surprised that there hasn't been a mention of how the merge to Ethereum 2.0, PoS will reduce energy consumption by 99%. A great background article going into some of the details here https://consensys.net/blog/ethereum-2-0/proof-of-stake-is-coming-to-ethereum-sooner-than-we-think/ https://consensys.net/blog/ethereum-2-0/proof-of-stake-is-co...
- dastx 6y ago
  I suppose the issue in this scenario isn't necessarily energy, but that it's miners are at odds with Ethereum devs to the point where they're willing to attack the network itself. Either way, I'm all for PoS because of the reduced energy consumption, and if it puts a middle finger in the face of the miners, who are partially to blame for shortages of consoles and GPUs, then I'm even more for it.
kizer 6y ago
Still have limited understanding of Cryptocurrency and blockchain in general :( I need a good book on it all.
nafizh 6y ago
Not quite related. What's the best way to start trading cryptocurrencies for a beginner considering ease of use, security etc?
Fede_V 6y ago
I've been moderately interested in crypto, but, I've held off on touching them in any form until a real ecofriendly alternative is in play - and I emphasize real (not a few obviously paid shills/imbecilles talking about how crypto is actually good for environment because it allocates capitol efficiently/thorium reactors etc etc). If eth switches to proof of stake in a meaningful way, I'll definitely take a serious look and possibly start investing in that ecosystem.
- Fede_V 6y ago
  Beyond naked self interest - it's also completely unclear to me how it's possible to defend mining. It's literally useless work that ruins our beautiful planet to accumulate wealth. How is that in any way defensible? It's far less ethical than investing in weapons manufacturing.
michaelgiba 6y ago
Blockchain is totally trustless. All you have to do is trust the source code maintainers, inventor, anonymous miners and hackers reading your smart contract code all at once. After that it’s 100% trustless.

As someone who uses both BTC and ETH and who likes both, this is one of the reason why people prefer Bitcoin over Ethereum. The reality is that the energy used to secure the Bitcoin blockchain (or the energy "wasted" according to many here) is important and makes a 51% attack prohibitively costly. While Vitalik coming with this potential solution is great, the reverse of that coin is that the developers have very significant control on the blockchain which is far from ideal.

undefined1 6y ago
is this also an issue with Ethereum competitors like Cardano?
- hanniabu 6y ago
  Cardano is a whole slew of different issues lol
  - gruez 6y ago
    elaborate?
- jki275 6y ago
  Not with ADA or Tezos. Bottom line, ADA is a proof of stake chain. It is upgraded in place based on proposals and consensus of stake pools. Same thing with Tezos. ADA hasn't fully rolled out all the features of the ETH blockchain yet -- I believe we're a couple of months away from the smart contract upgrade.
DennisP 6y ago
Developers can't do anything the users don't want. They can't make people adopt the new software. The miners are losing here because everybody else in the ecosystem wants proof-of-stake and 1559, including users, ETH holders, and app developers.
- chillacy 6y ago
  Absolutely, all the stuff built on ETH (defi, automated exchanges, nfts) can't truly take off when gas fees can cost 20-80 USD per action. There's already a blockchain that acts as a store of value, the world doesn't need a second bitcoin.
  - hanniabu 6y ago
    L2 (second layer) solutions like Optimism will fix the scaling issue. It's live with a limited Synthetix release now and will be open to the general public on the 15th. Many large projects including Uniswap, Compound, and Chainlink have said they will be migrating to Optimism L2. It's very simple to do (little to no changes needed) and with big names committing it seems to be the L2 of choice. WalletConnect, Metamask, and Coinbase have also said they'll be supporting it with Metamask and WalletConnect integration complete and WalletConnect in beta testing.
    - SubiculumCode 6y ago
      It seems to me that MATIC is making a good play as well.
      - casi 6y ago
        Matic is not an L2 though, it is a side chain. The reason L2s like optimism are exciting is because they inherit the security of ethereum mainnet. (matic has its own consensus mechanisms).
        SubiculumCode 6y ago
        Matic Polygon is a L2 aggregator. https://www.coindesk.com/matic-network-polygon-targets-ethereum-layer-2-woes https://www.coindesk.com/matic-network-polygon-targets-ether...
        hanniabu 6y ago
        Optimism also isn't rent seeking with their own coin. All gas is still paid in ETH.
bpodgursky 6y ago
The 51% attack here is only because PoW hasn't been completely eliminated yet... once ETH is on PoS, this attack won't be possible.
- jki275 6y ago
  Sure it will. It will just involve 51% of the stake pools instead of 51% of the miners.
  - bibabaloo 6y ago
    It's a little different with proof of stake. If there's a minority group that holds a large stake that "attacks" the blockchain against the majority's wishes, the majority group can decide to roll back and blacklist the minority group. It's much more difficult to blacklist hash power in this same way.
    - trhway 6y ago
      >the majority group can decide to roll back and blacklist the minority group. It's much more difficult to blacklist hash power in this same way. and that is supposedly advantage of pos over pow? In philosophical view the pow -> pos means taking power away from the more technical and giving it to the more business oriented group/approach. That has happened to Internet for example, and I just personally dont like such transitions.
    - jki275 6y ago
      That’s not how it works. The people who hold the majority of the stake are the majority, not the minority.
      - casi 6y ago
        There is a difference (with the introduction of slashing and user activated soft forks) in 51% attacks that revert finalized blocks. In PoW this type of attack would become cheaper as it persists, in PoS we have some defense that keeps making this attack expensive. On top of that the costs of attack are much greater in PoS than PoW, making these attacks much harder to begin with. https://vitalik.ca/general/2020/11/06/pos2020.html https://vitalik.ca/general/2020/11/06/pos2020.html
hanniabu 6y ago
> that the developers have very significant control on the blockchain The case for BTC in this regard is no different from ETH. In both cases developers put together an upgrade, then miners can either upgrade or not.
- rawtxapp 6y ago
  Except in this case, this is going against presumably 51% of the miners and changes take much longer to implement and activate on Bitcoin (taproot activation for example will be done over a very long period and needs a very high threshold). Going from PoW to PoS in such a small timeframe is pretty aggressive no matter how you look at it. As a user, I really hope it works out without major issues.
  - hanniabu 6y ago
    > and changes take much longer to implement and activate on Bitcoin That's a funny way of saying BTC doesn't innovate. > Going from PoW to PoS in such a small timeframe is pretty aggressive no matter how you look at it. It's been the plan for years. I first heard of it in 2017 and if I'm not mistaken I think it was also in the whitepaper. So it's neither coming out of the blue or an aggressive timeframe.
    - rawtxapp 6y ago
      > That's a funny way of saying BTC doesn't innovate. Or another way of saying you can expect some stability (and majority consensus) when there's more than a trillion dollars worth of value at stake. It's been discussed for a longtime, yes, but the expectation is that it would roll out in phases over the next year or two, not rushed out because of a potential 51% attack.
      - hanniabu 6y ago
        You say rushed but it's not rushed at all. It's simply just a priority change.
  - 6y ago

Bluestein 6y ago

This could get really ugly. (Not only per se, but, also, as it really shows how "centralized" these suposedly decentralized systems are ... ... and -this- could have consequences.)

hanniabu 6y ago
They are decentralized. This move is more of a risk mitigation strategy than risk of a 51% attack. There's also certain risks from miners at the transition block because they know the exact block it will happen at.
mempko 6y ago
it's centralized in both directions. Small development team and small group of powerful miners.
- hanniabu 6y ago
  What are you talking about, it has the most developers of any project.
  - mempko 6y ago
    Pareto Distribution. Most of the developers did very little. https://github.com/bitcoin/bitcoin/graphs/contributors https://github.com/bitcoin/bitcoin/graphs/contributors
shp0ngle 6y ago
ETH, and any cryptocurrency for that matter, has never been “decentralized” in terms of development. There are always a few guys making all major decisions, and it’s hard to oppose them other than making a forked currency.
- rauljordan2020 6y ago
  This is not true. I am one of the maintainers of https://github.com/prysmaticlabs/prysm https://github.com/prysmaticlabs/prysm, one of the main client implementations of eth2 today. My team is unaffiliated with the Ethereum Foundation. There are also 3 other client implementations of the protocol that are very robust and done by independent teams in different parts of the world. We also can't force users to accept all our changes, and development on ETH's infrastructure has indeed been trending towards more decentralization. There are few blockchains out there today with more than 1, production-quality client implementation.

moralestapia 6y ago

Not trying to be snarky but Vitalik itself is ETH's 51% attack ... What's the point of decentralized cryptocurrency when it falls down on the hands of one person.

DennisP 6y ago
At this point Vitalik is one researcher among many. He's taken care to remove himself from the "benevolent dictator" role he had at first. He is very productive though, and the other researchers and devs tend to find his ideas convincing.
- moralestapia 6y ago
  "A group of researchers" still doesn't feel like decentralized to me.
  - snissn 6y ago
    miners vs coders is very decentralized to me :) let the miners have their own chain!
  - hanniabu 6y ago
    You're pulling threads here. There's a lot of people involved. And then they still need to convince wallet developers and miners. And then once there's the move to PoS they'll also need to convince the users and stakers (miners removed from equation).
  - wizzwizz4 6y ago
    “A single species” doesn't feel decentralised, either. You're pumping your intuition rather than considering reality directly.
- xiphias2 6y ago
  If you look at what Pieter Wuelle is doing, he's also doing amazing work, but when it comes to make decisions, he goes to the background even if he has an opinion. I don't see the same thing happening to Vitalik. I'm not saying it's a problem, as Ethereum is a different network with different advantages and disadvantages, but he still looks like the final decision maker to me at this point (which is OK for me).

yawaworht1978 6y ago

Decentralized 51% attack... Not the first very profound eth conflict.

Bluestein 6y ago
Anybody remember Eth Classic, etc.?
- moralestapia 6y ago
  That "little thing" when they rolled out contracts and pretty much showed how easy it was to manipulate the currency at their whim ...
  - Bluestein 6y ago
    You know. Just a pesky detail.
  - Scoundreller 6y ago
    (This new) code is (the new) law.
    - Bluestein 6y ago
      Indeed. (You can really tell this is the case the minute "contracts" - IRL backed by "law" and all its affordances - actually became backed by -code- within this new paradigm ... ... wherein, incidentally, the VM running the on-chain contract has become the "judge", come to notice.)

typest 6y ago

I'm not an expert, but if 51% of the existing hashpower doesn't want a change, it sounds less a 51% attack and more like miners voting against something that isn't in their interest. The whole point of blockchains is that the incentives are supposed to be aligned between miners and users. If that isn't the case here, it sounds like a problem.

georgyo 6y ago
Crypto miners and and crypto users are aligned in the same way banks and customers are aligned.
chizhik-pyzhik 6y ago
It is a problem. That's a big reason for moving from proof-of-work to proof-of-stake- to more directly make the _holders_ of Ethereum in charge of the chain. It's a difficult thing to do, though. Hashpower based mining is easier to get going. Proof of stake has issues like the nothing-at-stake problem, where theoretically you could stake-mine on multiple chains: https://ethereum.stackexchange.com/questions/2402/what-exactly-is-the-nothing-at-stake-problem https://ethereum.stackexchange.com/questions/2402/what-exact...
- hertzrat 6y ago
  Isn’t half of our current money supply controlled by 1% of people? If the asset holders controlled things, why wouldn’t they just demand everyone else hand over their cash? https://www.cbsnews.com/news/richest-1-percent-control-more-than-half-of-all-wealth/ https://www.cbsnews.com/news/richest-1-percent-control-more-...
  - drcode 6y ago
    (1) even a 51% attack can't generate fake transactions to transfer that money (2) social power with blockchains (i.e. having people's ears on the social networks) is far more important than $$ power: If nobody wants to install and use your blockchain, no amount of $$ can fix that.

AzzieElbab 6y ago

I actually like all things crypto, but why does this tech have to suck so much

hanniabu 6y ago
It's getting there, just growing pains as it goes through cycles of innovation and improvements.
chrisco255 6y ago
Because this tech is not just about tech, but also game theory, consensus and economic incentives to align completely disconnected parties with completely different motives in a trustless manner.
- AzzieElbab 6y ago
  I think economic incentives are misaligned when it comes to providing a valuable open platform. Everything is way too expensive on blockchain.

omginternets 6y ago

Why is it a good thing to make ETH deflationary? Don't you want people to spend it?

tom_mellior 6y ago
[removed incorrect post, thanks for the correction]
- rawtxapp 6y ago
  I think you're confusing deflationary with depreciation. Deflationary currency means over time, there's less of it, so if the demand stays stable, you'd expect the price to go up.
Sargos 6y ago
People are never going to be using ETH as a currency. They would use stablecoins like DAI pegged to USD or a basket of assets. A high price of ETH as an asset creates a higher security level for Ethereum the blockchain. The ecosystem of projects, apps, protocols, organizations, etc on Ethereum is healthier when the blockchain is guaranteed secure and stable for everyone to use.
hanniabu 6y ago
It's not about making it deflationary, that's just a side effect of needing to burn the fees for the fee stabilization mechanism. I forget the details exactly, but if you don't burn them then miners can still do funny business.
meowkit 6y ago
One of the biggest mistakes of cryptocurrency was calling it cryptocurrency. Distributed Ledgers have multitudes of use cases. One of them is as a currency, but you don't need the base layer to be a currency. ETH doesn't need to be spent as much as its needed to act as a quantitative measure of ownership and buy in. You can build a currency on the second layer, which has been done.
- 6y ago

chucknthem 6y ago

Reminds me of the bitcoin cash fork and segwit drama in 2017.

jaimehrubiks 6y ago

Regardless of the current issues with the updates, gas prices, different opinions on the community, devs vs miners vs users... Am I the only one who thinks people underestimate Ethereum and its EVM invention? In 2013 this guy (who I think is a visionary) wrote a document with a proposal that led to the creation of a world-wide turing-complete distributed computer. And still, people are just starting to realize its potential. This month a layer-2 solution called optimism will launch a virtual machine called OVM (optimism vm) on top of ethereum smart contracts that can solve most of the current scalability issues (and there are other solutions being tested in parallel: zkrollups...). We are also starting to realize the potential of Dex and Defi (distributed exchanges and finance), DAOs (distributed organizations), NFT (non-fungible tokens) and a bunch of things more that 7 years after are appearing out of thin air. So even if Ethereum wasn't updated at all (although, we probably all agree that PoW is not environmental friendly and should be replaced with a better alternative: PoS) it could still thrive in the long term thanks to its most fundamental design choices (turing-complete...). I am truly amazed by this technology and Vitalik. I wish I knew a little bit more of the underlying fundamentals. What do you think?

numbsafari 6y ago
Never underestimate the efficiency with which money launderers and organized crime are able to innovate and adapt.
- hanniabu 6y ago
  It's easy to spot the people not knowledgeable in crypto when they just parrot the media's fear mongering narratives.
  - Aeolun 6y ago
    It’s easier for me to see the utility in any given random HN post, than in any form of cryptocurrency.
Sargos 6y ago
It really is amazing when you understand the capabilities and speed of iterations of the growing use cases of this new shared trust machine. DeFi, NFTs, DAOs, so many different ecosystems currently being built cooperatively by hundreds of different companies and project teams. It's almost a force of nature.

AaronFriel 6y ago

> There are a wide variety of benefits to this proposal, such as potentially making Ethereum deflationary Interesting that this is framed as a benefit.

Sargos 6y ago
A high price of ETH as an asset creates a higher security level for Ethereum the blockchain. The ecosystem of projects, apps, protocols, organizations, etc on Ethereum is healthier when the blockchain is guaranteed secure and stable for everyone to use. It's a benefit to everyone.
- wizzwizz4 6y ago
  Except people who want to use ETH as a currency, rather than an asset. If we're going to have inflation or deflation, pick inflation; that way, you can actually spend the stuff without FOMO.
  - Sargos 6y ago
    ETH is money but it's not currency. It's not meant to be used to buy everyday goods and services.
    - ntr-- 6y ago
      It is meant to be spent as gas in order to compensate for the energy costs of the computations in its smart-contracts. Why expend some amount of ETH building and executing products when you can just HODL and wait for the price to go up? Additionally, ease of spending drives up adoption which is a clear benefit to any currency.
      - Sargos 6y ago
        >Why expend some amount of ETH building and executing products when you can just HODL and wait for the price to go up? Most people aren't going to have a choice. ETH is required to be spent when making transactions and using dapps, NFTs, etc. Even L2s like Optimism, zkSync, etc will be spending ETH when writing to the L1 even if the end users are shielded from that. There is a built in economy that burns ETH so demand won't be a problem.

SirensOfTitan 6y ago

I think schisms are healthy, democratic strategies that lead to resiliency over time. It requires interest groups to play their cards, some will succeed independently, some will fail, and often the schism won't last (the groups will reconcile and merge back together). Others see conflict, and label that as "bad," but this just seems like democracy at work. Democracy is messy and looks chaotic to the uninitiated, but all order looks like chaos to the uninitiated. With that, I don't see blockchain governance as necessarily "decentralized," but anarchistic (non-pejoratively). Anarchistic governance can lead to complex institutions and centralization, the difference between it and traditional central organization is that participation is always completely voluntary. Most people are OK with letting the Ethereum foundation run the show most of the time, and that's totally compatible with decentralization. When people disagree, they typically organize into interest groups to either convince the current guard to consider their interests, or they schism (in this case).

crazypython 6y ago

The issue here seems to be that instead of giving miners the fees, they are destroyed, creating a deflationary spiral, which helps speculators' wallets (who want the money supply to shrink), while hurting miners' wallets. It helps ETH holders.

gus_massa 6y ago

If the fee are going to be (partially) burned, can the miners just ask that everyone pays the fees by a side channel? Perhaps make a smart contract that holds the same value of the fee until the transaction is included. The miners can just ensure to include both or neither, and get paid.

rawtxapp 6y ago
You can still tip a miner if you want to. Only thing burned is the "base fee".
- gus_massa 6y ago
  So it's as easy as adding `if $tip >= $base` somewhere in source code of the program they are running in the nodes. (You can call it a soft fork if you wish.)
drcode 6y ago
The game theory with the EIP1559 changes is that there will be ample space in blocks to put in transactions, and there will (roughly, under normal circumstances) be just enough transactions in the pool to fill each block. So the miner only has the options of either (A) filling the block with transactions to earn tips or (B) chose to be hostile and generate an empty block, just to have the next miner put the most profitable transactions in the followup block.
- latchkey 6y ago
  The blocks will be variable sized and can still fill up. Point #1 and #10 from the image here: https://hackmd.io/@timbeiko/1559-updates/https%3A%2F%2Fhackmd.io%2F%40timbeiko%2F1559-update-004#Economic-Analysis-%F0%9F%93%91 https://hackmd.io/@timbeiko/1559-updates/https%3A%2F%2Fhackm...
  - drcode 6y ago
    Sure, nothing you said really disagrees with my summary.

guiomie 6y ago

It's interesting that miners are protesting EIP-1559 proposal, which is burning away transaction fees as opposed to giving them to miners, while for the last years Eth has focused on completely eliminating miners with proof of stake. Why not protest the latter? What am I missing? Regardless, I sold all my mining equipment 2 years ago when it was clear that Eth was moving to PoS, mining alt-coins wasnt something I was interested in, since except for ETH and BTC, I believe all these chains are inferior.

drcode 6y ago
Oh, there will definitely be an ugly fight once we get close to removing POW altogether. This is part of the reason ethereum has an "ice age" which means the blockchain essentially stops working after a year if the community doesn't approve each new upgrade. But despite this, there will certainly be an "ethereum classic 2" in the near future.
olouv 6y ago
One theory is that they have planned to fork when POS does arrive but don’t want to have to rollback upgrades like EIP-1559 as it would negatively impact optics vs. keeping alive the “true original” ETH.

mrkramer 6y ago

Satoshi said "The nature of Bitcoin is such that once version 0.1 was released, the core design was set in stone for the rest of its lifetime."[1] Vitalik going from POW to POS is nonsense for any crypto electronic cash currency because people can not trust it if core design changes from time to time. Vitalik will probably come back again to POW after miners calm down. [1] https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=195.msg1611#msg1611 https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=195.msg1611#msg1611

viklove 6y ago
> Vitalik going from POW to POS is nonsense Being able to change for the better is not nonsense, it's vital to the survival and stability of a coin. The #1 complaint about Bitcoin (especially on HN) is its excessive use of power. Moving to POS solves this problem. Moving to POS allows ETH to scale transaction processing where BTC cannot. Miners are obviously angry because they spent millions (probably billions) on GPUs in warehouses to mine ETH, and this is threatening their profits. They're not the significant party when it comes to talking about ETH though. The users and larger ecosystem make up the significant parties. POS will happen. ETH 2.0 will happen. This is why ETH is better than BTC -- it has a leader like Vitalik who is open to changes and knows how to lead implementation. If miners want to throw a tantrum in the process, so be it. We'll just leave them behind.
- mrkramer 6y ago
  >The #1 complaint about Bitcoin (especially on HN) is its excessive use of power. And how much power does Google or Facebook consume? How much power does each Google and Facebook click take? There are good power sources like renewables and nuclear. Power is not a problem. And I'm not sure POS is a good solution because Satoshi would've used it or would've switched to it.
  - wmf 6y ago
    If relativity is such a good theory, why didn't Newton use it?
  - 6y ago

whywhywhywhy 6y ago

Looking at ETH in terms of wallets interacting with dapps, NFT, uniswap, etc it all honestly feels like magic. Obviously the high gas makes it feel a lot less like magic when every button click is 30-100$ but really this all gives me so much hope for a better post-mobile app based internet. I was so cynical for a long time about where tech was heading but this gives me hope that in 10 years we might be in a better place owned by the people and with better monetization outside of megacorps.

Rapzid 6y ago
It's amazing but yeah, 40 dollars to swap tokens... You could almost imagine it all being kept track of on paper or punch cards with people manually carrying out every transaction for that price LOL. I'm looking forward to smart contracts costing pennies per transaction. It's going to be a game changer for the utility of it all.
- thekyle 6y ago
  Are the high gas fees something that proof of stake will solve?
  - casi 6y ago
    The general idea is Layer 2s solve high gas. Most users will be using apps that run on a layer 2 and will make rare trips to the mainnet. The next thing being worked on is onboarding users direct to layer 2, and layer2 interoperability so you can move from one l2 to another You can already use an L2 DEX to exchange tokens (and have been able to for about a year) https://exchange.loopring.io/ https://exchange.loopring.io/ You can send L2 payments with https://zksync.io/ https://zksync.io/ But those are limited to their applications. General purpose L2s arrive this month! with Optimism https://optimismpbc.medium.com/ https://optimismpbc.medium.com/ and to be followed later this year by https://aztec.network/ https://aztec.network/ and others. With those we can redeploy code from mainnet to layer 2. With the apps on layer 2 the transaction fees will be fractions of cents and almost instant and a lot of the programs we have dreamed about but not been able to make become possible at scale. Its an exciting time!

ketamine__ 6y ago

Is anyone using Status? Do they release monthly active user stats?

dnprock 6y ago

Bitcoin, Ethereum, and cryptocurrency spawn a generation of people who worship Austrian economics. This ETH upgrade is making ETH even more deflationary. People are obsessed with price and want to pump the numbers. These wars are not doing anything to advance adoption and bring freedom to people. Crypto builders are pumping the coins under the banners of freedom and decentralization. The problem with crypto is volatility. The whole market moves in one direction or another, usually with Bitcoin. Scarcity is not the only thing that makes up the economy. We need also need inflation. Stop engaging in these ideological wars. Let's fix the problem and drive adoption. https://bitflate.org/post/2020/04/26/we-need-inflationary-cryptocurrency.html https://bitflate.org/post/2020/04/26/we-need-inflationary-cr...

deleted 6y ago
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Barrin92 6y ago
If you already come to the very sane and correct conclusion that deflationary and volatile cryptocurrencies are effectively useless as a means of exchange and as a primary tool to run an economy then you should just ditch decentralized currencies altogether because then you also get rid of the meaningless complications around mining, energy efficiency or user-friendliness and go to a digital central-bank currency directly which actually has the proper tools to do monetary policy and all you need is a database.
- gruez 6y ago
  >If you already come to the very sane and correct conclusion that deflationary and volatile cryptocurrencies are effectively useless as a means of exchange and as a primary tool to run an economy then [...] What about as a store of value? Gold is still around despite being heavy and hard to transact with.
  - bluecalm 6y ago
    Wanna store value? Buy actual value - that is things that make the wealth. Stocks in major companies, real estate, land in places people want to live in. The concept that buying promises is a good way to store value is a bizarre concept to me.

johndoe42377 6y ago

It is a disgrace to even mention this narcissistic clown here. If we remove all the hype and worshipping he is technically illiterate, the code is a spaghetti crap, which defeats all the principles of Go, and there is no rigorous research, only Twitter bullshitting.

oh_sigh 6y ago

All of these miners are the reason why, if you bought a graphics card 2 years ago, you can sell it for a profit today. So of course, they don't want a system that invalidates their investments in GPUs. The beauty of this system though is that they don't really get a choice. If Vitalik forks ETH into a PoS system, and enough people get behind it - it doesn't matter what the miners say.

jillesvangurp 6y ago
The nature of a fork is that the old system doesn't really go away. It's just that most of the economic activity that made it valuable (presumably) is going to move to the new system; so staying behind is kind of pointless. Of course the assumption here is that its current value had anything to do with economic activity (other than people gambling on the price of eth and other tokens). That's about to be validated in the real world. I've been more than a bit underwhelmed by ethereum, which if you separate out the speculative transactions actually doesn't have a whole lot going on in terms of people actually using it for real things. There's a little bit of that but mostly it's just people trying to get rich quickly. Lots of smart contracts idling and generally not doing what they were designed to do, games not really getting played, etc.

Aeolun 6y ago

Every time I read about anything related to cryptocurrency it reads like a high-school opera. With several orders of magnitude more money involved. I really don’t like this whole industry, and I cannot see how anyone would. It’s like a cult.

Magodo 6y ago
You seem to have described nations and religions as well. It applies to anything with a large number of interest groups involved
- Aeolun 6y ago
  To some extend, sure, but it’s much worse in Crypto (in my opinion, of course).
- sect2k 6y ago
  You are absolutely right, Bitcoin is a like religion, you need to let go of rational thought and have faith, HODL!
ur-whale 6y ago
> I really don’t like this whole industry Yet, you're here, reading the article and commenting.
- Aeolun 6y ago
  Well, I like HN, and I keep hoping that this time, things will be different.

lifeformed 6y ago

> they have even went as far as creating a website Wow, things are getting serious.

ur-whale 6y ago
/s there, fixed it for you

rauljordan2020 6y ago

I'm one of the maintainers of one of the implementations of eth2 live today (https://github.com/prysmaticlabs/prysm https://github.com/prysmaticlabs/prysm) and can help offer more context on this. Ethereum proof of stake has been live since December 1st and it currently secures over 6 billion USD worth of value https://beaconcha.in/ https://beaconcha.in/. Currently, this is a chain that lives in parallel to the proof of work chain we know as Ethereum today. The idea is that over this coming year, the entire state of Ethereum will be "merged" into this new chain that uses proof of stake consensus via a docking process. "Escalating the eth2 merge" means there is more expedited work from researchers and developers when it comes to performing this critical decision. Since eth2 consensus is already live and running correctly with a large set of validators, miners cannot censor this new chain and therefore cannot really stop the merge.

chrisco255 6y ago
Excellent work on prysmatic! Can you clarify about this "quick merge" proposal? Would the idea be to shift "ETH1" validation to the ETH2 Beacon nodes? At first two chains would be running and be validated by the same nodes but then much later the final merge of Beacon and ETH1 chains would occur? Is that the plan?
3np 6y ago
Do you think the headline is correct in labeling this as a 51% attack? The other argument would be that developers are trying to push through a contentious fork (mostly but not only contested by miners and mining pools), and mining nodes are planning to not adopt the proposed change?
- proto-n 6y ago
  Afaik there's no plan to attack, they are planning a "show of force", i.e. get more then 51% in a pool for a while without doing anything with the power. This is separate from either adapting or not adapting the fork itself and happens before the fork. The original chain has to be forked either way, with or without eip 1559 because the "ice age" coded into the current version (it's in there for this exact reason). So if the change goes through and some miners decide to block it, there's not going to be an "original chain" and a "fork", but two forks, one supported by devs and minority of miners, and one supported by miner majority.

wyldfire 6y ago

Once a miner makes a capital investment in a particular PoW, their interests are now more diverse than the general interests of the coin. They're vested in that particular PoW.

throwaway4good 6y ago

It sounds like the Ethereum "community" is about decide whether it believes in proof of work or the cult of Vitalik.

chrisco255 6y ago
The Ethereum community consists of thousands of application developers, tens of thousands of ETH2 proof of stake validators (who have been operational since December), and millions of users. There's no debate in the ETH community about the shift to proof of stake. It's already half done. We just need to finish the job faster since miners have gotten greedy and fat on $20M a day in transaction fees.
everfree 6y ago
The Ethereum dev team has been publicly committed to a PoS transition since the day Ethereum was launched. Anybody not aligned with this switch shouldn't have become a stakeholder in the protocol.

antpls 6y ago

Doesn't Vitalik/the dev team own the "Ethereum" name, which means they decide what get called "Ethereum" ? If there are two versions of the chain, because of a 51% attack or a fork, there always will be only one dev-approved chain called "Ethereum" on the exchanges, and that's what the users will buy.

pjfin123 6y ago
I think the Ethereum Foundation owns the trademark.

ur-whale 6y ago

Just read Vitalik's note and - interestingly enough - there isn't a single word about the potential damage to the miners, only how they could attack the proposal. In other words, he's simply considering them an enemy when they've in fact been investing blood and treasure for the past 8 years supporting his brainchild. People may call him a genius, but when they do, they're clearly not talking about his empathy abilities and leadership skills.

darawk 6y ago
They've been investing money to make money. They're running a business, not a charity. Changes like these are part of the process of improvement, this is exactly what they signed up for.
- ur-whale 6y ago
  You're missing my point: yes, they have benefited from the whole thing, no doubt there. But a responsible leader at the very least tries to address the fact that his proposal will throw a major chunk of the ecosystem under the bus and what's worse, on a completely unplanned timeline. And maybe propose mitigating solutions. Instead he immediately paints them as the enemy. Some leader you got there.
  - Hammershaft 6y ago
    I don't know much about Vitalik but I saw him supporting a carbon tax. It might be that he sees mining as a necessary evil to transition from.
andxor 6y ago
> they've in fact been investing blood and treasure They have made a tremendous amount of money by investing in his "brainchild". How are they victims?

eptcyka 6y ago

I really hope to see some cheap 6800xt's on eBay soon.

rullelito 6y ago

What? There are political risks with cryptos, and it is not the perfect system? I'm shocked!

Cypher 6y ago

A hard fork isn't going to work when all community and devs don't come along...

jules-jules 6y ago

Surprised that there hasn't been a mention of how the merge to Ethereum 2.0, PoS will reduce energy consumption by 99%. A great background article going into some of the details here https://consensys.net/blog/ethereum-2-0/proof-of-stake-is-coming-to-ethereum-sooner-than-we-think/ https://consensys.net/blog/ethereum-2-0/proof-of-stake-is-co...

dastx 6y ago
I suppose the issue in this scenario isn't necessarily energy, but that it's miners are at odds with Ethereum devs to the point where they're willing to attack the network itself. Either way, I'm all for PoS because of the reduced energy consumption, and if it puts a middle finger in the face of the miners, who are partially to blame for shortages of consoles and GPUs, then I'm even more for it.

kizer 6y ago

Still have limited understanding of Cryptocurrency and blockchain in general :( I need a good book on it all.

nafizh 6y ago

Not quite related. What's the best way to start trading cryptocurrencies for a beginner considering ease of use, security etc?

Fede_V 6y ago

I've been moderately interested in crypto, but, I've held off on touching them in any form until a real ecofriendly alternative is in play - and I emphasize real (not a few obviously paid shills/imbecilles talking about how crypto is actually good for environment because it allocates capitol efficiently/thorium reactors etc etc). If eth switches to proof of stake in a meaningful way, I'll definitely take a serious look and possibly start investing in that ecosystem.

Fede_V 6y ago
Beyond naked self interest - it's also completely unclear to me how it's possible to defend mining. It's literally useless work that ruins our beautiful planet to accumulate wealth. How is that in any way defensible? It's far less ethical than investing in weapons manufacturing.

michaelgiba 6y ago

Blockchain is totally trustless. All you have to do is trust the source code maintainers, inventor, anonymous miners and hackers reading your smart contract code all at once. After that it’s 100% trustless.