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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

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

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