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> Coins minted from staking would need to be continuously re-staked in order to maintain current profitability relative to your competitors Everybody gets the

> Coins minted from staking would need to be continuously re-staked in order to maintain current profitability relative to your competitors Everybody gets the exact same rate of return regardless of how much they have staked. Each validator has 32 ETH and gets the same amount of reward. You can take your profits and make a new validator or use them for something else, either way your existing validators will have the same profitability as everyone else.

jude- 6y ago
> Everybody gets the exact same rate of return regardless of how much they have staked. I don't think that's true. The amount of ETH created per block is determined independently of the amount of ETH staked. So if you stake 100 ETH and I stake 100 ETH, and we're the only stakers, then the protocol gives us each 50% of the ETH minted. But if someone else comes along and stakes 200 ETH, then you and I only get 25% each. This means that staking rewards are zero-sum. If the total reward stays constant, then my rewards per block increase if your stake decreases and mine stays the same (or if mine increases and yours stays the same). Therein lies the problem -- if I'm going to remain competitive with you, then I need to re-stake as much of my ETH block rewards as you do in order to keep receiving ETH at the same rate as you.
- DennisP 6y ago
  The total ETH created does depend on the amount staked. Here's a table[1] and formula[2]. The total reward doesn't go up linearly with the number of validators, but it does go up. Lowering the incentive for attacks like you mention is a reason for that. And while having fewer validators gives you a somewhat higher reward per validator, it's still that case that all validators get the same reward in any given block. Everyone is equally competitive. Someone who reinvests will get higher absolute rewards than they got before, but they pay the price of locking up more capital. In the same way, a miner could reinvest profits into more mining equipment, but that doesn't make them more competitive, just bigger. Their profit margin will be the same (barring economies of scale that don't exist in staking). [1] https://docs.ethhub.io/ethereum-roadmap/ethereum-2.0/eth-2.0-economics/ https://docs.ethhub.io/ethereum-roadmap/ethereum-2.0/eth-2.0... [2] https://github.com/ethereum/eth2.0-specs/blob/dev/specs/phase0/beacon-chain.md#rewards-and-penalties-1 https://github.com/ethereum/eth2.0-specs/blob/dev/specs/phas...
  - jude- 6y ago
    > The total ETH created does depend on the amount staked. Here's a table[1] and formula[2]. Thank you! I was unaware of this. I stand corrected. However, my original point stands under the added constraint that we don't have enough tokens to alter the yield (i.e. staking our tokens won't push the total staked quantity across a "yield boundary"). The difference in participation between two different yields is considerable, so I would expect this to be the common case. > Everyone is equally competitive. Someone who reinvests will get higher absolute rewards than they got before, but they pay the price of locking up more capital. Joining later puts you at a disadvantage, because you have to buy coins off of people who could be staking them. That's problematic from a resiliency perspective, because it makes it harder for new block-producers to come online. It also means that there's no "reserve capacity" in the system to tolerate the sudden loss of a large number of staked coins. This isn't true in PoW, because obsolete miners that aren't profitable to run today could be brought online in a pinch if enough profitable ones were to suddenly go offline. > In the same way, a miner could reinvest profits into more mining equipment, but that doesn't make them more competitive, just bigger. These aren't comparable. I could come up with a better, more efficient way to generate PoW outside of the protocol. But in PoS, the protocol mandates that I only use staking to increase my coin income. Per my original point, what this means in practice is that there will come a point where it's cheaper to increase my staking yield by DDoS'ing staking nodes, who will be slashed as a result (the link you gave indicates that the slashing begins after 25 minutes of over 33% of the staked tokens being knocked offline).
    - DennisP 6y ago
      Not sure if this is what you meant but there's no actual "yield boundary," it's a continuous function. The table just gives examples of the function outputs. I think you're overestimating the amount of ETH that will stake. Right now it's just 3%, and they think it's unlikely to go over 30% or so. ETH is used for a lot of stuff besides staking, with major uses so far including collateral for stablecoins and other defi, NFT purchases, and trading. The daily ETH trading volume right now is $34 billion, which is more than triple the staked amount. Also, while losing over 1/3 results in a loss of finality, we'd be losing something that doesn't exist in PoW networks in the first place. The network continues to run[1], with a nonzero but low chance of reverted blocks, while the quadratic inactivity leak burns away stake until 2/3 of remaining stake is active again. DDoS that knocked out over a third of the network, running on ISPs and hosting services all over the world on various independently-developed clients, would be quite a feat, and not likely to be sustained for very long. Since there will likely be plenty of non-staking ETH, more stake will be deposited after the attack, bringing the network back to the equilibrium of satisfactory returns. Or, if the attack were so severe it scared people off, then the price of ETH would also be affected, reducing the value of the attacker's stake. [1] https://ethresear.ch/t/explaining-the-liveness-guarantee/4228/10 https://ethresear.ch/t/explaining-the-liveness-guarantee/422...

jude- 6y ago

> Everybody gets the exact same rate of return regardless of how much they have staked. I don't think that's true. The amount of ETH created per block is determined independently of the amount of ETH staked. So if you stake 100 ETH and I stake 100 ETH, and we're the only stakers, then the protocol gives us each 50% of the ETH minted. But if someone else comes along and stakes 200 ETH, then you and I only get 25% each. This means that staking rewards are zero-sum. If the total reward stays constant, then my rewards per block increase if your stake decreases and mine stays the same (or if mine increases and yours stays the same). Therein lies the problem -- if I'm going to remain competitive with you, then I need to re-stake as much of my ETH block rewards as you do in order to keep receiving ETH at the same rate as you.

DennisP 6y ago
The total ETH created does depend on the amount staked. Here's a table[1] and formula[2]. The total reward doesn't go up linearly with the number of validators, but it does go up. Lowering the incentive for attacks like you mention is a reason for that. And while having fewer validators gives you a somewhat higher reward per validator, it's still that case that all validators get the same reward in any given block. Everyone is equally competitive. Someone who reinvests will get higher absolute rewards than they got before, but they pay the price of locking up more capital. In the same way, a miner could reinvest profits into more mining equipment, but that doesn't make them more competitive, just bigger. Their profit margin will be the same (barring economies of scale that don't exist in staking). [1] https://docs.ethhub.io/ethereum-roadmap/ethereum-2.0/eth-2.0-economics/ https://docs.ethhub.io/ethereum-roadmap/ethereum-2.0/eth-2.0... [2] https://github.com/ethereum/eth2.0-specs/blob/dev/specs/phase0/beacon-chain.md#rewards-and-penalties-1 https://github.com/ethereum/eth2.0-specs/blob/dev/specs/phas...
- jude- 6y ago
  > The total ETH created does depend on the amount staked. Here's a table[1] and formula[2]. Thank you! I was unaware of this. I stand corrected. However, my original point stands under the added constraint that we don't have enough tokens to alter the yield (i.e. staking our tokens won't push the total staked quantity across a "yield boundary"). The difference in participation between two different yields is considerable, so I would expect this to be the common case. > Everyone is equally competitive. Someone who reinvests will get higher absolute rewards than they got before, but they pay the price of locking up more capital. Joining later puts you at a disadvantage, because you have to buy coins off of people who could be staking them. That's problematic from a resiliency perspective, because it makes it harder for new block-producers to come online. It also means that there's no "reserve capacity" in the system to tolerate the sudden loss of a large number of staked coins. This isn't true in PoW, because obsolete miners that aren't profitable to run today could be brought online in a pinch if enough profitable ones were to suddenly go offline. > In the same way, a miner could reinvest profits into more mining equipment, but that doesn't make them more competitive, just bigger. These aren't comparable. I could come up with a better, more efficient way to generate PoW outside of the protocol. But in PoS, the protocol mandates that I only use staking to increase my coin income. Per my original point, what this means in practice is that there will come a point where it's cheaper to increase my staking yield by DDoS'ing staking nodes, who will be slashed as a result (the link you gave indicates that the slashing begins after 25 minutes of over 33% of the staked tokens being knocked offline).
  - DennisP 6y ago
    Not sure if this is what you meant but there's no actual "yield boundary," it's a continuous function. The table just gives examples of the function outputs. I think you're overestimating the amount of ETH that will stake. Right now it's just 3%, and they think it's unlikely to go over 30% or so. ETH is used for a lot of stuff besides staking, with major uses so far including collateral for stablecoins and other defi, NFT purchases, and trading. The daily ETH trading volume right now is $34 billion, which is more than triple the staked amount. Also, while losing over 1/3 results in a loss of finality, we'd be losing something that doesn't exist in PoW networks in the first place. The network continues to run[1], with a nonzero but low chance of reverted blocks, while the quadratic inactivity leak burns away stake until 2/3 of remaining stake is active again. DDoS that knocked out over a third of the network, running on ISPs and hosting services all over the world on various independently-developed clients, would be quite a feat, and not likely to be sustained for very long. Since there will likely be plenty of non-staking ETH, more stake will be deposited after the attack, bringing the network back to the equilibrium of satisfactory returns. Or, if the attack were so severe it scared people off, then the price of ETH would also be affected, reducing the value of the attacker's stake. [1] https://ethresear.ch/t/explaining-the-liveness-guarantee/4228/10 https://ethresear.ch/t/explaining-the-liveness-guarantee/422...