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Ethereum just activated its ‘London’ hard fork
- jyu 5y agoI asked this months ago and did not get any convincing answers. Ethereum is currently decentralized because of the initial POW distribution. 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!
- leesec 5y agohttps://vitalik.ca/general/2020/11/06/pos2020.html https://vitalik.ca/general/2020/11/06/pos2020.html >For certain kinds of 51% attacks (particularly, reverting finalized blocks), there is a built-in "slashing" mechanism in the proof of stake consensus by which a large portion of the attacker's stake (and no one else's stake) can get automatically destroyed.
- lasagnaphil 5y agoTo be honest, even without the actual 51% attacks happening, it would really suck to live in a world where just one entity had more than half ownership of a currency used by the people.
- SkyMarshal 5y ago>it would really suck to live in a world where just one entity had more than half ownership of a currency used by the people. You mean, kinda like in the real world? [1]:https://www.oxfam.org/en/press-releases/worlds-billionaires-have-more-wealth-46-billion-people https://www.oxfam.org/en/press-releases/worlds-billionaires-... [2]:https://www.oxfam.org/en/5-shocking-facts-about-extreme-global-inequality-and-how-even-it https://www.oxfam.org/en/5-shocking-facts-about-extreme-glob...
- jyu 5y agoIs it so hard to imagine that the US gov't does not want coinbase, gemini, etc to process payments from "terrorists" and block their transactions?
- gglon 5y agoAs I understand it a one way to disincentivise centralization is that when your node loses access to the network you lose more money if at the same time many other nodes/stake do not have access to the network. So it would be profitable to have an independent server and internet access.
- nullc 5y ago> Ethereum is currently decentralized because of the initial POW distribution Ethereum was launched with a 100% 'premine' of 72M coins, printed out of thin air and handed to the founders to keep or sell as they decided. Since then another 44M have been mined, though it's not clear how much of that mining was also by insiders who influenced the work function's hardware compatibility or protected their hardware investment by controlling when/if the work function was changed or when mining was discontinued.
- marcasey 5y agoThis will encourage users to transact in ETH compared to before because of its excessive transaction fees. I think that this upgrade will truly create a sense of urgency as every transaction will have some ETH burned.
- bugzz 5y agoHere you can track how much Eth has been burned so far: https://ethburned.info/ https://ethburned.info/
- mmmeff 5y agoWhat does it mean for Eth to be burned?
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- bugzz 5y agoThis change burns the "base fee" instead of giving it to miners, which means it goes to nobody and is gone forever
- lasagnaphil 5y agoIf it goes to nobody, is it really "gone forever"? Did it even exist in the first place? The confusions arise from thinking cryptocurrency tokens as material things (like gold). Money is just a numeric representation of the social relationship people have with each other, and the rules of the monetary system is just an technical agreement on how we should have relationships with others. This is a change of rules for the relationship between miners and owners: nothing is "lost" or "burned". Whether you agree upon that change of contract is up to yours, but the actual "disappearing" of money isn't an issue in the slightest here.
- xur17 5y ago> If it goes to nobody, is it really "gone forever"? Did it even exist in the first place? Yes? Isn't "going to nobody" the very definition of "gone forever"? Previously miners received the ETH spent on fees, and either kept it, or traded it for cash. Since they will be receiving less, they will have less that they can sell, which should result in less selling pressure.
- 5y ago
- arberx 5y agoRolling/live update of a $300B consensus layer holding over $50B of assets, and moving much much more everyday. Pretty impressive.
- exo762 5y ago"Shadowy super-coders", as Elizabeth Warren famously said.
- thunkshift1 5y agoThere isnt anything shadowy. It all open sourced unlike some of the work that bankers do.
- nwsm 5y agoThoughts on crypto as viable currencies aside, I have always been impressed by the engineering.
- echopurity 5y agoCongrats to the ETH development crew for another smooth upgrade. Good luck and please be careful with the transition to POS!
- AlexandrB 5y agoI hope this eases the demand for graphics cards somewhat.
- chrisco255 5y agoThat won't happen until the merge to proof of stake, which is supposed to happen early 2022.
- X6S1x6Okd1st 5y agoI'm theory London could because it reduces the mining reward, but MEV has really thrown a wrench into that plan
- BitwiseFool 5y agoMEV?
- throwawayForMe2 5y agoMiner extracted value. https://www.paradigm.xyz/2020/08/ethereum-is-a-dark-forest/ https://www.paradigm.xyz/2020/08/ethereum-is-a-dark-forest/
- thatguy0900 5y agoI think the demand for graphics will stay bit you will also be unable to buy hard drives
- DaftDank 5y agoCan someone explain to me how PoS is not centralized? The whole point of crypto and the blockchain is decentralization, no? I feel like crypto/blockchain will end up looking nothing like how it was intended, and be regulated to the point that it's just the next iteration of the traditional banking system, where the current power holders continue holding the power. Maybe I was naive to ever think it would be any different.
- jl2718 5y agoThe first stocks ever sold to the public were claims on land in a new world, an escape from servitude to kings. Turns out they were just being swindled by a bankrupt crown to keep their own oppressors in power. But there was a new world, and people did escape.
- MuirsGhost 5y agoPeople don't escape, they toil for a new master, on new ground. From sea to shining sea, the new world's plundered resources eventually turned into Bitcoin.
- CryptoPunk 5y agoVery melodramatic, but inaccurate. The American portion of the New World offered significantly higher hourly wages for unskilled labor than the industrial heartland of Europe, by the late 1800s. And these wages grew at record rates all through the latter decades of the 1800s, in the midst of the largest influx of penniless workers in US history (causing the foreign born portion of the US population to reach 15% by 1890). That wages grew as fast as they did, with such a massive increase in the supply side of the supply and demand equation for labor, is testament to the opportunities that the principal nation of the New World was generating.
- mftb 5y agoBoth you're points and the gp's are good, but yours aren't refuting his, only pointing out that the master grew more generous. What's worth refuting in gp's post is the notion that humanity is "plundering" nature. Humanity is nature, that's what there's no escaping, unless you believe in the supernature. I really don't think PoS or PoW are going to change what you guys are talking about.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- dleslie 5y agoSo I have some ETH; is there anything I should be doing?
- __s 5y agoNo
- lasagnaphil 5y agoNo, if you're just an owner. If you're a miner though... that's a whole different story.
- eric-hu 5y agoNot a miner but I’m curious. What should miners be doing differently?
- thebean11 5y agosudo apt upgrade geth
- Fiahil 5y agoUpdate their running software.
- drdrey 5y agoUpgrading their nodes
- fogof 5y agoI don't think there's anything miners really have to do differently because of this. The only big thing would be to make sure to upgrade your software to the version that has the code for the hard fork (though at this point the hard fork has already happened, so you would be a bit late). But regular users should upgrade their hardware too so that their clients track the correct chain, otherwise they might not see the right balance.
- 5y ago
- tgsovlerkhgsel 5y agoWhat are the current best estimates for the timeline of the proof-of-stake transition?
- X6S1x6Okd1st 5y agoThe next hard fork/upgrade has to happen before December 2021, that's when the difficulty bomb needs to be moved again. It's unlikely that it'll happen that early, but iirc PoS is now the biggest priority
- everfree 5y agoDecember 2021 is the optimistic estimate, Q1-Q2 2022 is the more realistic one, and the one I've been hearing lately from some people involved in the process.
- voz_ 5y agoSame as always, a solution with no real problems to solve. Crypto is a big, useless, bubble.
- X6S1x6Okd1st 5y agoHow long can this go on until you stop believing it's a bubble?
- voz_ 5y agoDo bubbles become less of a bubble a certain point? What problems does it solve? It has no real use.
- everfree 5y agoHere is a list of problems the blockchain space has improved, according to Ethereum founder Vitalik Buterin: https://www.reddit.com/r/Buttcoin/comments/oac9lc/the_charles_ponzi_of_the_modern_era_answers/h3lf9g1/ https://www.reddit.com/r/Buttcoin/comments/oac9lc/the_charle...
- voz_ 5y agoHere's a list of why gazelles love to eaten, by a cheetah.
- etaioinshrdlu 5y agoIf Ethereum can hard fork like this, it stands to reason as well that the 21 Million Bitcoin limit is a lot more changeable than Bitcoin proponents would say. Or the opposite is true - and Ethereum is under heavily centralized control.
- chrisco255 5y agoAll blockchains are controlled by rough consensus. There's already like half a dozen Bitcoin forks in the wild (Bitcoin Cash, BSV, etc). When Bitcoin Cash forked off from the main chain in 2017, the community ultimately decided which chain was the "legitimate" one. Of course Bitcoin could decide to increase the issuance. In doing so, however, it would inevitably lead to a fork (with the 21M holdouts in one camp and the inflationists in another) and the community would ultimately need to decide which one to support.
- X6S1x6Okd1st 5y agoGood explanation. Imo the block size wars was the beginning of the end for Bitcoin. I chose the chain most hashed and it's only now that I realize that Bitcoin gave up on growing and improving at that point. Bch is a joke, PoW just doesn't work unless you're the biggest game in town. BTC is shackled to staying incredibly conservative.
- etaioinshrdlu 5y agoI agree with all of this - but the conclusion I reach is that proponents of Bitcoin are lying when they say it's unchangeable and certainly deflationary, or digital gold. It's changeable if people want it to change.
- alasano 5y agoAnything is technically possible. In reality no one wants this to change the limit on the 21 million number and any proposal to modify this particular aspect of Bitcoin will get shot down immediately. Lying would mean they know what they're saying isn't true. Practically speaking it's completely true.
- potiuper 5y agoIs there a site like https://ethernodes.org/london https://ethernodes.org/london, but also with a % of the hashpower? An anti-EIP 1559 mining cartel made an attempt to fork Ethereum and it would be interesting to know how close they came. https://www.coindesk.com/ethereum-mining-pools-threaten-contentious-update https://www.coindesk.com/ethereum-mining-pools-threaten-cont...
- X6S1x6Okd1st 5y agoI don't think that threat ever really materalized. MEV happened and then there was a suggestion by VB of switching to the PoS chain in response to a miner lead fork: https://notes.ethereum.org/@vbuterin/B1mUf6DXO https://notes.ethereum.org/@vbuterin/B1mUf6DXO
- remir 5y agoGas fees becoming more predictable is nice, but the fact they can get so large for small transactions is quite frustrating. I wanted to swap a bunch of coins worth 8$ into another token and the gas fees were around 28$, which is just insane.
- X6S1x6Okd1st 5y agoYeah, unfortunately the main chain will likely be this bad until all the shards are executing shards. You'll need to go to an L2 until that happens
- Sargos 5y agoNote that execution shards are not really on the roadmap anymore as sharding is planned to be data only and serve as a scaling factor for L2 rollups. In just a few years the only usage of the L1 will be security and data availability for rollups and a settlement layer for international organizations and state level actors with the vast majority of normal activity happening on various L2s.
- arberx 5y agoMost clients haven't updated to the new fee model. Once they do you'll see similar if not less gas fees (strictly due to better prediction).
- perryizgr8 5y agoI am just praying this means I can finally afford an RTX 3070.
- BTCOG 5y agoIt's centralized, it's basically a CBDC 1.0. It's worse than fiat.
- lottin 5y agoDoes that mean Ethereum is no longer an environmental disaster?
- jstx1 5y agoNo, the move away from proof of work is another fork scheduled for a few months from now.
- chizhik-pyzhik 5y agoNo, this change just makes fees less volatile. The environmental fix is expected to come sometime next year- https://ethereum.org/en/eth2/ https://ethereum.org/en/eth2/
- Havoc 5y agoTo me in a way the big news here is a major news website (cnbc) reporting on this near live. That's a pretty solid "sht is about to get real" in my books