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For the people who criticize as to why they've taken so long in shifting to a PoS model: consensus takes time, so does developing and testing something that def

For the people who criticize as to why they've taken so long in shifting to a PoS model: consensus takes time, so does developing and testing something that definitively shouldn't go wrong. Also, there's the inherent issue with Proof-of-Stake that Proof-of-Work doesn't have: the initial distribution of the coin has to be wide enough before it could feasibly self-maintain a PoS shift without being immediately vulnerable to consensus attacks. Ethereum is definitively mature enough by now, it wasn't a few years ago.

jerrycruncher 5y ago
Consensus may take time, but when you're pouring gas onto a fire, arguing that you need to dump out most of the can before you can be sure you know what you're doing isn't a defensible position.
- dboat 5y ago
  I don't understand what you're trying to say.
bsedlm 5y ago
> the initial distribution of the coin has to be wide enough I don't understand how proof of stake works to the depth I understand proof of work. But this reassures me that it's feasable that they'll accomplish the same distributed consensus. So then, could I say that Ethereum proof of stake will allow the owners of the coins (ether) to be independent from the owners of the mining operations? or uhmm... is the independence between the computaional costs of the "mining" and actual minted ether?
- kemonocode 5y ago
  Ethereum proof of work made it so the owners of the coins could be independent from the owners of the mining operations, even if in practice many miners end up keeping most of the block rewards themselves and only reinvesting what they need in new infrastructure and to maintain what they already have. Proof of stake makes it so the miners and holders are now the same (you stake the coins that you have, or you pool them up with others), however the cost to wreck the chain is much greater than it would have been 3-4 years ago. The whole idea is that Ether is so spread out now, it'd be unfeasible for someone to snatch up enough of it for an attack, in a similar way to how an ever-increasing difficulty makes it harder for a hostile actor to coordinate enough of it to make such attack.
  - jyu 5y ago
    Maybe it is spread out now, but won't there be centralized aggregators of eth so some point in the future a handful of POS nodes control a disproportionate amount of power? Is it so hard to imagine that coinbase or some other exchange accumulates enough eth to sway transaction validation? Seriously, please answer if this is wrong!
    - swensel 5y ago
      I do think there will be some centralization at the exchange level. As of April 2021, Kraken had 600,000 ETH staked for ETH2 [1]. It's not in the interest of Kraken or Coinbase to disrupt one of these PoS networks, but there is some barrier to entry for staking ETH2 or other PoS coins on your own, vs staking them on an exchange. In the case of ETH2, if your staking node goes down, you get slashed and lose some ETH. If there isn't slashing (not all PoS coins have that), I don't see what guarantee of network security or uptime there is. I'd be curious what PoS coin experts think about this part. It seems like PoS / staking can lead to centralization. PoW has energy concerns for sure, but it has so far demonstrated decentralization pretty well. I'm legitimately curious about this. I'd love for PoS to be feasible and am trying to understand it more. [1] https://en.cryptonomist.ch/2021/04/20/ethereum-2-0-600-thousand-eth-staked-on-kraken/ https://en.cryptonomist.ch/2021/04/20/ethereum-2-0-600-thous...
      - 0134340 5y ago
        Centralization meaning those who have more gain more? I'd love to hear about any currency that doesn't have this feature/bug. Those who gain power tend to be able to acquire more by bootstrapping from prior power; it's pretty much universal. Even PoW has its own form of centralization in that those who have more can become richer and more easily gain therefore leading to maturation (centralization) of the currency.
        swensel 5y ago
        My understanding is those who have more coins on a PoS network have more stake / power. This can matter if there are things like on-chain governance / voting rights, depending on their stake. Those with more stake would also get more staking rewards (it's like an APR % return based on the total staked), and if they stake their rewards as well, then they'd have even more total stake on the network. There also are concerns with those having a majority of the stake in a network being able to disrupt or attack the network (things like slashing based on poor behavior can prevent bad actors from wanting to do that, as they would lose some or all of what they had staked in that case). There are also different kinds of PoS though, and I'm not an expert on it.
agumonkey 5y ago
I wonder if it's already on on a testnet
- X6S1x6Okd1st 5y ago
  Here's the testnet: https://nocturne.rayonism.io/ https://nocturne.rayonism.io/
- DennisP 5y ago
  The PoS protocol itself has been running in production since December 1, in parallel with the old network, with over $10 billion staked so far. What remains is to change the legacy clients to use the PoS network for choosing blocks, instead of miners. That has a working multi-client testnet.
CarlBeek 5y ago
Here are a few of the reasons that come to mind as to why this transition has been taking us so long: * The design of the Beacon Chain is far more optimised than our initial designs for a PoS system * There are far more crypto-economic edge cases in a PoS system when compared to PoW * Software development is hard and time estimates are even harder * The use of a hybrid fork choice to balance safety and liveness trade-offs * There is a crazy amount of value being handles on Ethereum so it is necessary to be conservative with our changes (move fast and break things is not an option) * There are 4 concurrent implementations being developed all of which need to be inter-compatible, and production ready * As Ethereum governance is decentralised we need a shelling point for exactly what Ethereum PoS looks like, this takes time * We have worked hard to create, encourage, and embrace standards with other chains so that the cryptocurrency community of tomorrow is more inter-compatible (eg. IETF BLS standard or libp2p networking) * We have spent time designing around quantum-computing resistant backups for the majority of the cryptography (eg. validators all have a Lamport backup key though most don't realise it) * New cryptography has been developed and previously abandoned schemes revitalised (eg. Verifiable Delay Functions or the Legendre PRF)
- rfd4sgmk8u 5y ago
  * Its a technically flawed solution that now has so much hype, abandoning the idea would lead to further FUD, tarnishing the project's future direction. So we must go through the motions to appease the energy FUD warriors.
  - CarlBeek 5y ago
    lol, Ethereum's Beacon Chain already been running since Dec 1. See https://beaconcha.in/ https://beaconcha.in/ Please point me towards the flaws.
    - rfd4sgmk8u 5y ago
      Point me at its purpose? As far as I can tell, it was a trick to remove coin from circulation, locking it away where it could not be used again. The fact that people have tokenized these beacon coins on other chains to trade show that people want their money back!
ourcat 5y ago
I really hope they don't rush all this merging and forking. And also "audit the auditors". So they don't end up on a future rekt.news leaderboard.
swensel 5y ago
This is one thing I've been wondering about new projects that start with PoS. How do they have enough distribution of the coins in order for them to be resilient against attacks?
- hanniabu 5y ago
  Exactly, the devil is in the details, just like how all current "scalable" blockchains are only able to do so because they sacrificed decentralization. Ethereum is dealing with growing pains right now because it's solving scalability with an approach that doesn't sacrifice decentralization or security.
  - WanderPanda 5y ago
    AFAIK they are already at 6-8tb for their blockchain. Seems to be not very helpful with a high diversity of staking nodes. I am in doubt that their turing complete global computer can scale AND stay decentralized
    - Sargos 5y ago
      That's only for an archive node which isn't that useful to the network and is generally only used by specialist. A full Ethereum node easily fits on a 1TB drive and with research ongoing into statelessness the problem of state growth won't be a problem long term.
- nootropicat 5y ago
  This is a good point and I think only ethereum has sufficient distribution. The sole advantage of PoW over PoS is distribution - miners sell, dumping the price, which is also likely to make other people to sell. Even many ethereum founders sold very low - Vlad Zamfir in particular sold ~100% below $20 (he tweeted about it, can't find it now). Ethereum had 6 years of PoW now - most likely nothing else can repeat its distribution, ever. The time of PoW is visibly over. Another point is that ethereum was icoed when crypto was tiny, few people believed smart contracts could have value and VC stayed away. Normal people are much more likely to sell just to buy a house. Now new coins start with coins distributed to VC and they are prepared to hold for years hoping for eth-tier returns. There's an argument that not that many people even knew about the ico - but the same is true for bitcoin mining early. It's very hard to quantify precisely but I think both have almost identical coin concentration. Be wary of manipulative statistics that ignore the inherent differences between the utxo vs account model - like percentage of coins held by top x%. The assumed practice in an account-based model is for one user to use one address, while the current practice for utxo coins is to use one address per received transaction. Same is true for value sent per timeframe - because utxo relies on change addresses the actual transferred value is much smaller.

jerrycruncher 5y ago

Consensus may take time, but when you're pouring gas onto a fire, arguing that you need to dump out most of the can before you can be sure you know what you're doing isn't a defensible position.

dboat 5y ago
I don't understand what you're trying to say.

bsedlm 5y ago

> the initial distribution of the coin has to be wide enough I don't understand how proof of stake works to the depth I understand proof of work. But this reassures me that it's feasable that they'll accomplish the same distributed consensus. So then, could I say that Ethereum proof of stake will allow the owners of the coins (ether) to be independent from the owners of the mining operations? or uhmm... is the independence between the computaional costs of the "mining" and actual minted ether?

kemonocode 5y ago
Ethereum proof of work made it so the owners of the coins could be independent from the owners of the mining operations, even if in practice many miners end up keeping most of the block rewards themselves and only reinvesting what they need in new infrastructure and to maintain what they already have. Proof of stake makes it so the miners and holders are now the same (you stake the coins that you have, or you pool them up with others), however the cost to wreck the chain is much greater than it would have been 3-4 years ago. The whole idea is that Ether is so spread out now, it'd be unfeasible for someone to snatch up enough of it for an attack, in a similar way to how an ever-increasing difficulty makes it harder for a hostile actor to coordinate enough of it to make such attack.
- jyu 5y ago
  Maybe it is spread out now, but won't there be centralized aggregators of eth so some point in the future a handful of POS nodes control a disproportionate amount of power? Is it so hard to imagine that coinbase or some other exchange accumulates enough eth to sway transaction validation? Seriously, please answer if this is wrong!
  - swensel 5y ago
    I do think there will be some centralization at the exchange level. As of April 2021, Kraken had 600,000 ETH staked for ETH2 [1]. It's not in the interest of Kraken or Coinbase to disrupt one of these PoS networks, but there is some barrier to entry for staking ETH2 or other PoS coins on your own, vs staking them on an exchange. In the case of ETH2, if your staking node goes down, you get slashed and lose some ETH. If there isn't slashing (not all PoS coins have that), I don't see what guarantee of network security or uptime there is. I'd be curious what PoS coin experts think about this part. It seems like PoS / staking can lead to centralization. PoW has energy concerns for sure, but it has so far demonstrated decentralization pretty well. I'm legitimately curious about this. I'd love for PoS to be feasible and am trying to understand it more. [1] https://en.cryptonomist.ch/2021/04/20/ethereum-2-0-600-thousand-eth-staked-on-kraken/ https://en.cryptonomist.ch/2021/04/20/ethereum-2-0-600-thous...
    - 0134340 5y ago
      Centralization meaning those who have more gain more? I'd love to hear about any currency that doesn't have this feature/bug. Those who gain power tend to be able to acquire more by bootstrapping from prior power; it's pretty much universal. Even PoW has its own form of centralization in that those who have more can become richer and more easily gain therefore leading to maturation (centralization) of the currency.
      - swensel 5y ago
        My understanding is those who have more coins on a PoS network have more stake / power. This can matter if there are things like on-chain governance / voting rights, depending on their stake. Those with more stake would also get more staking rewards (it's like an APR % return based on the total staked), and if they stake their rewards as well, then they'd have even more total stake on the network. There also are concerns with those having a majority of the stake in a network being able to disrupt or attack the network (things like slashing based on poor behavior can prevent bad actors from wanting to do that, as they would lose some or all of what they had staked in that case). There are also different kinds of PoS though, and I'm not an expert on it.

agumonkey 5y ago

I wonder if it's already on on a testnet

X6S1x6Okd1st 5y ago
Here's the testnet: https://nocturne.rayonism.io/ https://nocturne.rayonism.io/
DennisP 5y ago
The PoS protocol itself has been running in production since December 1, in parallel with the old network, with over $10 billion staked so far. What remains is to change the legacy clients to use the PoS network for choosing blocks, instead of miners. That has a working multi-client testnet.

CarlBeek 5y ago

Here are a few of the reasons that come to mind as to why this transition has been taking us so long: * The design of the Beacon Chain is far more optimised than our initial designs for a PoS system * There are far more crypto-economic edge cases in a PoS system when compared to PoW * Software development is hard and time estimates are even harder * The use of a hybrid fork choice to balance safety and liveness trade-offs * There is a crazy amount of value being handles on Ethereum so it is necessary to be conservative with our changes (move fast and break things is not an option) * There are 4 concurrent implementations being developed all of which need to be inter-compatible, and production ready * As Ethereum governance is decentralised we need a shelling point for exactly what Ethereum PoS looks like, this takes time * We have worked hard to create, encourage, and embrace standards with other chains so that the cryptocurrency community of tomorrow is more inter-compatible (eg. IETF BLS standard or libp2p networking) * We have spent time designing around quantum-computing resistant backups for the majority of the cryptography (eg. validators all have a Lamport backup key though most don't realise it) * New cryptography has been developed and previously abandoned schemes revitalised (eg. Verifiable Delay Functions or the Legendre PRF)

rfd4sgmk8u 5y ago
* Its a technically flawed solution that now has so much hype, abandoning the idea would lead to further FUD, tarnishing the project's future direction. So we must go through the motions to appease the energy FUD warriors.
- CarlBeek 5y ago
  lol, Ethereum's Beacon Chain already been running since Dec 1. See https://beaconcha.in/ https://beaconcha.in/ Please point me towards the flaws.
  - rfd4sgmk8u 5y ago
    Point me at its purpose? As far as I can tell, it was a trick to remove coin from circulation, locking it away where it could not be used again. The fact that people have tokenized these beacon coins on other chains to trade show that people want their money back!

ourcat 5y ago

I really hope they don't rush all this merging and forking. And also "audit the auditors". So they don't end up on a future rekt.news leaderboard.

swensel 5y ago

This is one thing I've been wondering about new projects that start with PoS. How do they have enough distribution of the coins in order for them to be resilient against attacks?

hanniabu 5y ago
Exactly, the devil is in the details, just like how all current "scalable" blockchains are only able to do so because they sacrificed decentralization. Ethereum is dealing with growing pains right now because it's solving scalability with an approach that doesn't sacrifice decentralization or security.
- WanderPanda 5y ago
  AFAIK they are already at 6-8tb for their blockchain. Seems to be not very helpful with a high diversity of staking nodes. I am in doubt that their turing complete global computer can scale AND stay decentralized
  - Sargos 5y ago
    That's only for an archive node which isn't that useful to the network and is generally only used by specialist. A full Ethereum node easily fits on a 1TB drive and with research ongoing into statelessness the problem of state growth won't be a problem long term.
nootropicat 5y ago
This is a good point and I think only ethereum has sufficient distribution. The sole advantage of PoW over PoS is distribution - miners sell, dumping the price, which is also likely to make other people to sell. Even many ethereum founders sold very low - Vlad Zamfir in particular sold ~100% below $20 (he tweeted about it, can't find it now). Ethereum had 6 years of PoW now - most likely nothing else can repeat its distribution, ever. The time of PoW is visibly over. Another point is that ethereum was icoed when crypto was tiny, few people believed smart contracts could have value and VC stayed away. Normal people are much more likely to sell just to buy a house. Now new coins start with coins distributed to VC and they are prepared to hold for years hoping for eth-tier returns. There's an argument that not that many people even knew about the ico - but the same is true for bitcoin mining early. It's very hard to quantify precisely but I think both have almost identical coin concentration. Be wary of manipulative statistics that ignore the inherent differences between the utxo vs account model - like percentage of coins held by top x%. The assumed practice in an account-based model is for one user to use one address, while the current practice for utxo coins is to use one address per received transaction. Same is true for value sent per timeframe - because utxo relies on change addresses the actual transferred value is much smaller.