5 ms·

I'm not convinced Vitalik is a great leader. Ethereum is currently an infinite coin like Doge. The miners have taken control and blew past the original soft cap

I'm not convinced Vitalik is a great leader. Ethereum is currently an infinite coin like Doge. The miners have taken control and blew past the original soft cap of 100M Eth of EIP 669. I'm sure he made more mistakes, but that and the ETH classic debacle makes me think he's an idol to be worshiped. Heck POS is a reaction to the original ETH being unable to scale. Sure infinite coins can be fixed later, but the same can be said about Bitcoin. If POS works, it can be implemented on Bitcoin.

fossuser 5y ago
POS is a reasonable trade-off to solve scaling and make DeFi practical (imo) - his blog posts about it and arguments make sense. > "Sure infinite coins can be fixed later, but the same can be said about Bitcoin. If POS works, it can be implemented on Bitcoin." In theory yes, in practice no. BTC community elevated a clear con-man fake Satoshi because he took sides in a block size political battle. They can't even agree to increase the block size. This lack of leadership is a problem, moving to ETH2 is a serious project and requires a leader, priorities, direction etc. I don't think BTC can do any of this.
doggosphere 5y ago
If POS works, it can be implemented on Bitcoin. Yes, but can you convince the hardcore PoW maximalists to join your fork? IMO Bitcoin is doing its best to be a raw, pseudo-physical element. That means immutability, costs rooted in the physical world, etc. The community will change its protocols sparingly and slowly. To some who prefer rapid change and development this is unattractive. But to Bitcoiners, decentralization and immutability are the foundations of this new type of property. They are uninterested in technical gains that come with complexity and risk.
- DonHopkins 5y ago
  Check out how doggosphere conducts himself, and how dishonest he is. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27843693 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27843693
api 5y ago
Infinite coins with reasonable inflation could be better as actual currencies. Anything with a hard finite supply that is also subject to breakage due to lost keys is ridiculously deflationary and will take on the dynamics of a Ponzi scheme. DOGE is problematic because it's an infinite coin with an inflation rate that is too high.
- cyberge99 5y ago
  DOGE inflation rate drops over time.
  - tromp 5y ago
    Exactly. I wrote about the false dichotomy of capped vs uncapped in https://john-tromp.medium.com/a-case-for-using-soft-total-supply-1169a188d153 https://john-tromp.medium.com/a-case-for-using-soft-total-su...
Animats 5y ago
I saw him speak once, in EE380 at Stanford. He tried to bullshit the audience about how the smart contract system was secure due to proof by construction. (The audience was Stanford computer science faculty, students, and tech people from Silicon Valley. Not a group to try to bullshit.) This was before the DAO hack.
- DennisP 5y ago
  Are you sure that wasn't about Vlad Zamfir's proof-of-stake ideas? Back then Vlad gave a bunch of talks about those being "correct by construction," and he and Vitalik worked closely together. I don't recall Vitalik ever claiming that arbitrary smart contracts built on top of Ethereum were provably safe. Back then nobody was applying formal proof to smart contract code, it was just regular devs slamming out Solidity scripts with minimal third-party audits. That's what the vulnerable DAO code was; there wasn't a formal proof within miles of that stuff. The hack did not target the Ethereum protocol itself. Applying formal proofs to smart contracts does make sense, since failures are expensive and the code is short. There's been gradual movement in that direction but it's been slow.
  - Animats 5y ago
    Unfortunately, the videos are no longer at http://web.stanford.edu/class/ee380/ http://web.stanford.edu/class/ee380/ Once Stanford gets fully restarted, I'll see if I can dredge those up.
DennisP 5y ago
EIP669 was a difficulty bomb delay, which happens every year or so. The difficulty bomb was never intended to make monetary policy. The point was to keep upgrades from failing to deploy due to node operator complacency. The difficulty bomb forces them to upgrade their code in some way, either to the upgraded version, or to the same old version with a bomb delay. Issuance right now is 2 ETH/block. The white paper just promised 5 ETH/block forever. https://ethereum.org/en/whitepaper/ https://ethereum.org/en/whitepaper/ Net issuance will be lower after 1559 rolls out in August and starts burning a portion of transaction fees. Combining that with the PoS merge in half a year or so, and net issuance may well go negative. (Ethereum's PoS isn't really a scaling solution though.)

fossuser 5y ago

POS is a reasonable trade-off to solve scaling and make DeFi practical (imo) - his blog posts about it and arguments make sense. > "Sure infinite coins can be fixed later, but the same can be said about Bitcoin. If POS works, it can be implemented on Bitcoin." In theory yes, in practice no. BTC community elevated a clear con-man fake Satoshi because he took sides in a block size political battle. They can't even agree to increase the block size. This lack of leadership is a problem, moving to ETH2 is a serious project and requires a leader, priorities, direction etc. I don't think BTC can do any of this.

doggosphere 5y ago

If POS works, it can be implemented on Bitcoin. Yes, but can you convince the hardcore PoW maximalists to join your fork? IMO Bitcoin is doing its best to be a raw, pseudo-physical element. That means immutability, costs rooted in the physical world, etc. The community will change its protocols sparingly and slowly. To some who prefer rapid change and development this is unattractive. But to Bitcoiners, decentralization and immutability are the foundations of this new type of property. They are uninterested in technical gains that come with complexity and risk.

DonHopkins 5y ago
Check out how doggosphere conducts himself, and how dishonest he is. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27843693 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27843693

api 5y ago

Infinite coins with reasonable inflation could be better as actual currencies. Anything with a hard finite supply that is also subject to breakage due to lost keys is ridiculously deflationary and will take on the dynamics of a Ponzi scheme. DOGE is problematic because it's an infinite coin with an inflation rate that is too high.

cyberge99 5y ago
DOGE inflation rate drops over time.
- tromp 5y ago
  Exactly. I wrote about the false dichotomy of capped vs uncapped in https://john-tromp.medium.com/a-case-for-using-soft-total-supply-1169a188d153 https://john-tromp.medium.com/a-case-for-using-soft-total-su...

Animats 5y ago

I saw him speak once, in EE380 at Stanford. He tried to bullshit the audience about how the smart contract system was secure due to proof by construction. (The audience was Stanford computer science faculty, students, and tech people from Silicon Valley. Not a group to try to bullshit.) This was before the DAO hack.

DennisP 5y ago
Are you sure that wasn't about Vlad Zamfir's proof-of-stake ideas? Back then Vlad gave a bunch of talks about those being "correct by construction," and he and Vitalik worked closely together. I don't recall Vitalik ever claiming that arbitrary smart contracts built on top of Ethereum were provably safe. Back then nobody was applying formal proof to smart contract code, it was just regular devs slamming out Solidity scripts with minimal third-party audits. That's what the vulnerable DAO code was; there wasn't a formal proof within miles of that stuff. The hack did not target the Ethereum protocol itself. Applying formal proofs to smart contracts does make sense, since failures are expensive and the code is short. There's been gradual movement in that direction but it's been slow.
- Animats 5y ago
  Unfortunately, the videos are no longer at http://web.stanford.edu/class/ee380/ http://web.stanford.edu/class/ee380/ Once Stanford gets fully restarted, I'll see if I can dredge those up.

DennisP 5y ago

EIP669 was a difficulty bomb delay, which happens every year or so. The difficulty bomb was never intended to make monetary policy. The point was to keep upgrades from failing to deploy due to node operator complacency. The difficulty bomb forces them to upgrade their code in some way, either to the upgraded version, or to the same old version with a bomb delay. Issuance right now is 2 ETH/block. The white paper just promised 5 ETH/block forever. https://ethereum.org/en/whitepaper/ https://ethereum.org/en/whitepaper/ Net issuance will be lower after 1559 rolls out in August and starts burning a portion of transaction fees. Combining that with the PoS merge in half a year or so, and net issuance may well go negative. (Ethereum's PoS isn't really a scaling solution though.)