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There's a little more to the argument: > This time the working class has their pay reduced from 4 Eth to 3 Eth per block, a 25% pay cut. Miners now earn 40% le

There's a little more to the argument: > This time the working class has their pay reduced from 4 Eth to 3 Eth per block, a 25% pay cut. Miners now earn 40% less per block than at the time of the community’s constitution, which promised that code was law, and which the ruling class later said they would break only once, for what was an especially good reason. But the code is law promise has now been broken so many times people expect it to occur at regular intervals and even worry that “progress” is slowing down if there aren’t frequent enough hard forks (to break that promise yet again).

chrisco255 5y ago
Miners for Ethereum are incredibly profitable and benefit enormously from side-channel MEV (miner extractable value) payouts that tip them for transaction ordering. In doing so, they extract value from users making trades. In addition, a reduced issuance in crypto tends to lead to the underlying asset appreciating in value, as noted by the Bitcoin stock-to-flow model in the wake of each halvening. The "code is law" is not some universal absolute. Blockchains have always been forkable. But a chain can't have a contentious fork without a cost and it becomes costlier and riskier to do later in a chain's life.
- BLKNSLVR 5y ago
  My understanding of MEV was "Maximum Extractable Value", and to clarify: MEV is the process by which a miner takes advantage of their ability to view pending transactions so they can "front-run" (add their own transactions ahead of) the transactions of others, bumping up the costs for the transactions that come after theirs, thus "extracting maximum value" from their privileged position. Using the original article author's analogy, the "working class" are adding their own percentage to the retail price and taking those profits home.
  - chrisco255 5y ago
    MEV began as Miner Extractable Value, but a lot of people are adopting Maximum so that they can keep the same acronym for proof of stake. They typically don't have the on-chain analysis or skill to reorder the transactions in the highest extractable way, so people bid for these opportunities through side channels they signal the miner to do (off-chain) based on the mempool (backlog) of transactions. Miners profit from this activity and in some cases these profits exceed the 2ETH per block issuance. The class analogy is strained and doesn't fit at all. These are only possible because Ethereum has a rich application layer (and if anyone is 'working class' it's the users, devs and dapps on the chain). But these profits more than made up for any offset in EIP1559 losses.
- ButtSpark69 5y ago
  Also, Ethereum Classic has been 51% attacked and then reversed transactions a few times. So not sure if author is recommending ppl avoid altcoins entirely?
AgentME 5y ago
The way that's written like Ethereum owes the miners a job strange. Ethereum isn't a work program for miners to manage mining hardware. Ethereum functions on proof-of-work and needs some people to sell their compute time and electricity. Miners aren't doing a generous service that would be useful outside of Ethereum that should be encouraged any further than Ethereum's specific needs. With PoS, the pay for miners is planned to be cut from 3 eth all the way down to 0, and that's great that Ethereum will become more efficient in that it no longer needs so much compute time spent on it. Ethereum will switch to needing stakers to provide a service to it that they're paid for, but if people designing Ethereum knew a way to not require that while still staying decentralized, then that would also be a great upgrade.
- h0l0cube 5y ago
  > The way that's written like Ethereum owes the miners a job strange I think it's fair that if you've purchased specialized mining equipment, you expect the ROI you were promised. Doesn't seem strange. > Ethereum functions on proof-of-work and needs some people to sell their compute time and electricity So compensation for work. If not 'workers', you could call them 'investors', or perhaps 'sole traders', or 'merchants', not sure what the best analogy would be. To be fair, I don't necessarily put them in the same class as people making socks in a sweat shop on slave wage. The down-trodden Ethereum miner is not someone I lose sleep about.
  - Dylan16807 5y ago
    > I think it's fair that if you've purchased specialized mining equipment, you expect the ROI you were promised. Doesn't seem strange. * It uses GPUs. * ROI in terms of ethereum is basically irrelevant. Real ROI depends on the bouncy crazy chart. * Was there not enough warning before the changes?
    - h0l0cube 5y ago
      > It uses GPUs. Many miners buy purpose built servers for crypto mining. > Was there not enough warning before the changes? That's the main plaint of the article, and reiterated multiple times. The article claims that the prices was dropped with 2 of the forks, each time it was promised (including at the very beginning) that changes would never be made. Each fork seemed to be of gain to the people who were part of the ICO, but at an income loss to miners. There were several broken promises of no further forks.
vvillena 5y ago
This argument is so old that it's almost endearing to see people arguing about it time and time again. Code isn't law, and it never was. Consensus is. This is true for all blockchain-based cryptos. Miners are free not to upgrade every time a new protocol version is proposed. Why do they upgrade then? If consensus was established around the older set of rules, that would be it. But instead there's consensus around the newer rules. And that's simply because miners individually decide that the newer rules are better, for whatever reason.
iSnow 5y ago
Honestly, that's where the article becomes totally bizarre. ETH is now worth in fiat 3000x more than in 2015, and miner's expenditures are in fiat. So instead of cutting mining rewards by say 95%, it got cut by 25% and that's somehow evil? Miners don't earn 40% less, they earn 180000% more than back then. Of course not individual miners, but as a "working class".

chrisco255 5y ago

Miners for Ethereum are incredibly profitable and benefit enormously from side-channel MEV (miner extractable value) payouts that tip them for transaction ordering. In doing so, they extract value from users making trades. In addition, a reduced issuance in crypto tends to lead to the underlying asset appreciating in value, as noted by the Bitcoin stock-to-flow model in the wake of each halvening. The "code is law" is not some universal absolute. Blockchains have always been forkable. But a chain can't have a contentious fork without a cost and it becomes costlier and riskier to do later in a chain's life.

BLKNSLVR 5y ago
My understanding of MEV was "Maximum Extractable Value", and to clarify: MEV is the process by which a miner takes advantage of their ability to view pending transactions so they can "front-run" (add their own transactions ahead of) the transactions of others, bumping up the costs for the transactions that come after theirs, thus "extracting maximum value" from their privileged position. Using the original article author's analogy, the "working class" are adding their own percentage to the retail price and taking those profits home.
- chrisco255 5y ago
  MEV began as Miner Extractable Value, but a lot of people are adopting Maximum so that they can keep the same acronym for proof of stake. They typically don't have the on-chain analysis or skill to reorder the transactions in the highest extractable way, so people bid for these opportunities through side channels they signal the miner to do (off-chain) based on the mempool (backlog) of transactions. Miners profit from this activity and in some cases these profits exceed the 2ETH per block issuance. The class analogy is strained and doesn't fit at all. These are only possible because Ethereum has a rich application layer (and if anyone is 'working class' it's the users, devs and dapps on the chain). But these profits more than made up for any offset in EIP1559 losses.
ButtSpark69 5y ago
Also, Ethereum Classic has been 51% attacked and then reversed transactions a few times. So not sure if author is recommending ppl avoid altcoins entirely?

AgentME 5y ago

The way that's written like Ethereum owes the miners a job strange. Ethereum isn't a work program for miners to manage mining hardware. Ethereum functions on proof-of-work and needs some people to sell their compute time and electricity. Miners aren't doing a generous service that would be useful outside of Ethereum that should be encouraged any further than Ethereum's specific needs. With PoS, the pay for miners is planned to be cut from 3 eth all the way down to 0, and that's great that Ethereum will become more efficient in that it no longer needs so much compute time spent on it. Ethereum will switch to needing stakers to provide a service to it that they're paid for, but if people designing Ethereum knew a way to not require that while still staying decentralized, then that would also be a great upgrade.

h0l0cube 5y ago
> The way that's written like Ethereum owes the miners a job strange I think it's fair that if you've purchased specialized mining equipment, you expect the ROI you were promised. Doesn't seem strange. > Ethereum functions on proof-of-work and needs some people to sell their compute time and electricity So compensation for work. If not 'workers', you could call them 'investors', or perhaps 'sole traders', or 'merchants', not sure what the best analogy would be. To be fair, I don't necessarily put them in the same class as people making socks in a sweat shop on slave wage. The down-trodden Ethereum miner is not someone I lose sleep about.
- Dylan16807 5y ago
  > I think it's fair that if you've purchased specialized mining equipment, you expect the ROI you were promised. Doesn't seem strange. * It uses GPUs. * ROI in terms of ethereum is basically irrelevant. Real ROI depends on the bouncy crazy chart. * Was there not enough warning before the changes?
  - h0l0cube 5y ago
    > It uses GPUs. Many miners buy purpose built servers for crypto mining. > Was there not enough warning before the changes? That's the main plaint of the article, and reiterated multiple times. The article claims that the prices was dropped with 2 of the forks, each time it was promised (including at the very beginning) that changes would never be made. Each fork seemed to be of gain to the people who were part of the ICO, but at an income loss to miners. There were several broken promises of no further forks.

vvillena 5y ago

This argument is so old that it's almost endearing to see people arguing about it time and time again. Code isn't law, and it never was. Consensus is. This is true for all blockchain-based cryptos. Miners are free not to upgrade every time a new protocol version is proposed. Why do they upgrade then? If consensus was established around the older set of rules, that would be it. But instead there's consensus around the newer rules. And that's simply because miners individually decide that the newer rules are better, for whatever reason.

iSnow 5y ago

Honestly, that's where the article becomes totally bizarre. ETH is now worth in fiat 3000x more than in 2015, and miner's expenditures are in fiat. So instead of cutting mining rewards by say 95%, it got cut by 25% and that's somehow evil? Miners don't earn 40% less, they earn 180000% more than back then. Of course not individual miners, but as a "working class".