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For the upcoming POS Ethereum chain (which is still being worked on!), the current cost is around $15 billion. And that increases as more stakers get online. V

by kerng 5y ago

For the upcoming POS Ethereum chain (which is still being worked on!), the current cost is around $15 billion. And that increases as more stakers get online. Vitalik Buterin just explained that a few days ago and provided that number. So I'm very sceptical of these numbers on that website or I'm not able parse what it tries to say.

shoto_io 5y ago
> which is still worked on Sounds like any other IT project!
lvh 5y ago
A very different number for a 51% attack against a completely different consensus mechanism does not seem like it should provoke skepticism. Especially since resistance against 51% attacks is a specific benefit of that new mechanism. Are you proposing that the website plops down that $15B number for a consensus mechanism that isn't even operational yet? (I think there are other things that are misleading, notably that it measures what Nicehash could do, but not all of its capacity is actually for rent at any given time.)
gregwebs 5y ago
That’s a small sum for many nation states but good to know we only have to worry about nations or conspiracies. Do you have a link to more information about this?
- pa7x1 5y ago
  https://beaconcha.in/ https://beaconcha.in/ This is the Proof of Stake Ethereum explorer. There is over 5 M ETH staked at thr moment which gives the value given above at current market prices. In truth, that's more of a lower bound because you would have to buy that same amount of ETH in the market which would raise the price. Additionally, Ethereum's PoS algorithm contains slashing penalties that are used to burn the ETH of an attacker. So a 51% attack may occur once, the attacker then gets slashed, loses his stake and the chain continues without the attacker's stake. Read further: https://cointelegraph.com/news/vitalik-buterin-reveals-why-a-51-attack-on-eth-2-0-would-not-be-fatal https://cointelegraph.com/news/vitalik-buterin-reveals-why-a...
littlestymaar 5y ago
> For the upcoming POS Ethereum chain (which is still being worked on!), the current cost is around $15 billion. Just curious, do we have an idea of how much Buterin himself holds?
- darkwizard42 5y ago
  A quick google search shows he has about 1B of ETH in his public address. About 333K ETH if you want the coin amount.
  - littlestymaar 5y ago
    Thank you. I wonder how he sleeps at night, given how juicy he is as a target for organized crime and North Korea. $1B + the benefit you'd get from shorting ethereum just before selling (and the collapse that would follow), sounds really appealing.
dathinab 5y ago
As some point out this is based on the price of buying hashing power from NiceHash, which in case of Ethereum can at most cover 7% of Ethereums hashing power. And costs are different if you need to buy/invest in the hardware to pull a 51% attack furthermore even if you "could just rent more" you would be adding hashing power to the Ethereum network increasing when 51% is hit as you don't replace hashing power, and then the more you buy the more "pricey" hashing power becomes... that is if you can even get the required amount of hashing power in current economics. (E.g. if Etherums current hashing power is 100 then you need >50 hashing power, but you need to get >50 hashing power OF that 100 hashing power if you just add 50 hashing power you now have a total hashing power of 150 and as such need 75. So if you control 0 of the current hashing power and have no way to reduce that you need to add >100% of the hashing power to controll >50% of the final hashing power...). The 51% attacks only allow double spend attacks, you can't "steal" money and the attacks sooner or later will be noticed and might be reversed. Then even if you run a 51% attack it's still a crime in more or less any country and controlling 51% of hashing power and staying truly anonymous isn't easy, given how much electricity and hardware PoW consumes. (But it's viable, through maybe only if you are state backed.) The most feasible way to pull of a 51% attack on a larger network IMHO is by hacking multiple hashing pools. Through like the article mentions it's a completely different thing for smaller networks. It also shows nicely why you need increasingly more hashing power the more value moves through your network (it's a counter argument to people defending PoW by saying you could just do more transactions per block). It's also why some new chains which use PoS start out with "a farming game" where people already "stack" money before the crypto currency is worth any money (and get money based on that when "it goes live"). Because with that you can start with a already reasonable secure system. > I'm not able parse what it tries to say. 1. Small crypto currencies are not so secure (if not build on another chain). 2. PoW is not as grate as some people make it out to be (IMHO PoW a terribly solution but it probably was the best terrible solution when Bitcoin was made). 3. And I would add: PoW based Currencies hashing cost and marked value needs to be in balance. (For PoS it's the stacked amount and marked value, which is IMHO easier to archive as it doesn't require additional factors like access to hardware and cheap electricity.)

by kerng 5y ago

shoto_io 5y ago

> which is still worked on Sounds like any other IT project!

lvh 5y ago

A very different number for a 51% attack against a completely different consensus mechanism does not seem like it should provoke skepticism. Especially since resistance against 51% attacks is a specific benefit of that new mechanism. Are you proposing that the website plops down that $15B number for a consensus mechanism that isn't even operational yet? (I think there are other things that are misleading, notably that it measures what Nicehash could do, but not all of its capacity is actually for rent at any given time.)

gregwebs 5y ago

That’s a small sum for many nation states but good to know we only have to worry about nations or conspiracies. Do you have a link to more information about this?

pa7x1 5y ago
https://beaconcha.in/ https://beaconcha.in/ This is the Proof of Stake Ethereum explorer. There is over 5 M ETH staked at thr moment which gives the value given above at current market prices. In truth, that's more of a lower bound because you would have to buy that same amount of ETH in the market which would raise the price. Additionally, Ethereum's PoS algorithm contains slashing penalties that are used to burn the ETH of an attacker. So a 51% attack may occur once, the attacker then gets slashed, loses his stake and the chain continues without the attacker's stake. Read further: https://cointelegraph.com/news/vitalik-buterin-reveals-why-a-51-attack-on-eth-2-0-would-not-be-fatal https://cointelegraph.com/news/vitalik-buterin-reveals-why-a...

littlestymaar 5y ago

> For the upcoming POS Ethereum chain (which is still being worked on!), the current cost is around $15 billion. Just curious, do we have an idea of how much Buterin himself holds?

darkwizard42 5y ago
A quick google search shows he has about 1B of ETH in his public address. About 333K ETH if you want the coin amount.
- littlestymaar 5y ago
  Thank you. I wonder how he sleeps at night, given how juicy he is as a target for organized crime and North Korea. $1B + the benefit you'd get from shorting ethereum just before selling (and the collapse that would follow), sounds really appealing.

dathinab 5y ago

As some point out this is based on the price of buying hashing power from NiceHash, which in case of Ethereum can at most cover 7% of Ethereums hashing power. And costs are different if you need to buy/invest in the hardware to pull a 51% attack furthermore even if you "could just rent more" you would be adding hashing power to the Ethereum network increasing when 51% is hit as you don't replace hashing power, and then the more you buy the more "pricey" hashing power becomes... that is if you can even get the required amount of hashing power in current economics. (E.g. if Etherums current hashing power is 100 then you need >50 hashing power, but you need to get >50 hashing power OF that 100 hashing power if you just add 50 hashing power you now have a total hashing power of 150 and as such need 75. So if you control 0 of the current hashing power and have no way to reduce that you need to add >100% of the hashing power to controll >50% of the final hashing power...). The 51% attacks only allow double spend attacks, you can't "steal" money and the attacks sooner or later will be noticed and might be reversed. Then even if you run a 51% attack it's still a crime in more or less any country and controlling 51% of hashing power and staying truly anonymous isn't easy, given how much electricity and hardware PoW consumes. (But it's viable, through maybe only if you are state backed.) The most feasible way to pull of a 51% attack on a larger network IMHO is by hacking multiple hashing pools. Through like the article mentions it's a completely different thing for smaller networks. It also shows nicely why you need increasingly more hashing power the more value moves through your network (it's a counter argument to people defending PoW by saying you could just do more transactions per block). It's also why some new chains which use PoS start out with "a farming game" where people already "stack" money before the crypto currency is worth any money (and get money based on that when "it goes live"). Because with that you can start with a already reasonable secure system. > I'm not able parse what it tries to say. 1. Small crypto currencies are not so secure (if not build on another chain). 2. PoW is not as grate as some people make it out to be (IMHO PoW a terribly solution but it probably was the best terrible solution when Bitcoin was made). 3. And I would add: PoW based Currencies hashing cost and marked value needs to be in balance. (For PoS it's the stacked amount and marked value, which is IMHO easier to archive as it doesn't require additional factors like access to hardware and cheap electricity.)