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> Excuses are made and explanations are given as to why in this particular case an exception needs to be made to the “Code is Law” promise I really wonder what

by csomar 5y ago

> Excuses are made and explanations are given as to why in this particular case an exception needs to be made to the “Code is Law” promise I really wonder what Ethereum investors think of this. A "precedent" was made. Crypto has yet to come to the real test with governments, courts and the physical laws of humans. With Bitcoin, it can be stipulated that changing the network is impossible or unheard of; but that's not the case for Ethereum. It doesn't help, also, that the network is being "processed" by a few elites (or pools of wealth) that could be, potentially, identified and made to obey the "government/s". This is not the case of Bitcoin where the introduction of KYC for mining will require a hard-fork. Bitcoin (the core chain) has never undertook a hard-fork (which is why a lot of Bitcoin forks are out there).

whitepaint 5y ago
Majority should decide. Majority decided. Majority will decide. I completely agree with this.
nootropicat 5y ago
>This is not the case of Bitcoin where the introduction of KYC for mining will require a hard-fork. That's not true, introducing full kyc for transactions only requires 51% of hashrate. >It doesn't help, also, that the network is being "processed" by a few elites (or pools of wealth) that could be, potentially, identified and made to obey the "government/s". A direct opposite is true. PoW is extremely vulnerable to a government takeover. Even in the worst case, buying majority of hashpower requires few billions at most - which is well within the ability of many countries. More practically, overwhelming majority of mining is done by registered companies in impossible to hide industrial warehouses, making them trivial to regulate and force to do kyc. Total fees are very low on bitcoin now, meaning it's more profitable to mine even empty blocks (due to kyc requirement) in a place with cheap electricity than try to mine with transactions in a place with more expensive electricity. Additionally, America is notorious for trying to enforce its jurisdiction globally, so eg. European miners processing kycless American transaction may find themselves in an American prison. Even if their countries won't extradite them, all it takes is a vacation in a wrong country. Chinese ban on mining has ironically made miners-enforced kyc a much more likely prospect. Other countries are much more likely to cooperate with America and jointly force miners to enforce kyc. Contrary to PoW, PoS can function purely anonymously - invisible home nodes instead of big industrial warehouses. External attack by buying enough stake is impossible - there's simply not enough for sale over any realistic periods of time. Regulation is infeasible because legal escape is in theory possible even if only one tiny place in the world remains without forced kyc - there's no need for GWs of power, just some power and internet. Even in countries where it's illegal, hiding a home node is realistic - using tor, vpns and similar, making enforcement very hard. Hopefully kyc laws on block generation aren't actually enforced as that would significantly impact adoption, however, if they were actually to happen, you are going to see bitcoin miners enforcing kyc while eth2 PoS continues unchanged.
- csomar 5y ago
  Forcing a KYC on miners will trigger a hard-fork on the Bitcoin chain. It doesn't matter where miners keep mining, the end users are going to determine the strongest chain (via price) and thus the KYC miners will either shutdown operations or move to a KYC-free environment.
  - nootropicat 5y ago
    Hard fork to what? Gpu PoW? That doesn't work in an adverse environment, considering it would start from zero (gpu mining is almost going to disappear after mining eth ends). In fact existing asic miners could easily rent enough gpus just to kill the new fork by not allowing any transactions. In fact when LukeJr made a threat of a PoW fork during the segwit activation drama, Chinese miners said they secured enough gpus to kill the fork when it starts.
sanderjd 5y ago
Why would that require a hard fork? It doesn't seem like it would need to be done on chain at all...

by csomar 5y ago

whitepaint 5y ago

Majority should decide. Majority decided. Majority will decide. I completely agree with this.

nootropicat 5y ago

>This is not the case of Bitcoin where the introduction of KYC for mining will require a hard-fork. That's not true, introducing full kyc for transactions only requires 51% of hashrate. >It doesn't help, also, that the network is being "processed" by a few elites (or pools of wealth) that could be, potentially, identified and made to obey the "government/s". A direct opposite is true. PoW is extremely vulnerable to a government takeover. Even in the worst case, buying majority of hashpower requires few billions at most - which is well within the ability of many countries. More practically, overwhelming majority of mining is done by registered companies in impossible to hide industrial warehouses, making them trivial to regulate and force to do kyc. Total fees are very low on bitcoin now, meaning it's more profitable to mine even empty blocks (due to kyc requirement) in a place with cheap electricity than try to mine with transactions in a place with more expensive electricity. Additionally, America is notorious for trying to enforce its jurisdiction globally, so eg. European miners processing kycless American transaction may find themselves in an American prison. Even if their countries won't extradite them, all it takes is a vacation in a wrong country. Chinese ban on mining has ironically made miners-enforced kyc a much more likely prospect. Other countries are much more likely to cooperate with America and jointly force miners to enforce kyc. Contrary to PoW, PoS can function purely anonymously - invisible home nodes instead of big industrial warehouses. External attack by buying enough stake is impossible - there's simply not enough for sale over any realistic periods of time. Regulation is infeasible because legal escape is in theory possible even if only one tiny place in the world remains without forced kyc - there's no need for GWs of power, just some power and internet. Even in countries where it's illegal, hiding a home node is realistic - using tor, vpns and similar, making enforcement very hard. Hopefully kyc laws on block generation aren't actually enforced as that would significantly impact adoption, however, if they were actually to happen, you are going to see bitcoin miners enforcing kyc while eth2 PoS continues unchanged.

csomar 5y ago
Forcing a KYC on miners will trigger a hard-fork on the Bitcoin chain. It doesn't matter where miners keep mining, the end users are going to determine the strongest chain (via price) and thus the KYC miners will either shutdown operations or move to a KYC-free environment.
- nootropicat 5y ago
  Hard fork to what? Gpu PoW? That doesn't work in an adverse environment, considering it would start from zero (gpu mining is almost going to disappear after mining eth ends). In fact existing asic miners could easily rent enough gpus just to kill the new fork by not allowing any transactions. In fact when LukeJr made a threat of a PoW fork during the segwit activation drama, Chinese miners said they secured enough gpus to kill the fork when it starts.

sanderjd 5y ago

Why would that require a hard fork? It doesn't seem like it would need to be done on chain at all...