7 ms·

For those not that involved in this stuff, ETH2 fixes this issue by switching to proof-of-stake. There are already billions being staked in ETH2 validators toda

For those not that involved in this stuff, ETH2 fixes this issue by switching to proof-of-stake. There are already billions being staked in ETH2 validators today in preparation for the switch and Vitalik has written and talked a lot about it if you’re curious. It’s been making progress and Vitalik is a smart and capable leader of the project imo. High gas fees in the current system are arguably a sign of high demand.

Animats 5y ago
Ah, yes, the Etherium conversion to proof of stake, scheduled for January 2020. Then December 2020. Right now, there is no hard date.
proto-n 5y ago
Proof of stake has little to do with transaction costs. The roadmap to scaling is sharding + layer 2 tech (optimistic and zk rollup, some of it is already live like arbitrum).
- soco 5y ago
  But storing things off-chain kinda kills the entire concept, doesn't it? If I hack into DigitalOcean I can mess everybody's NFTs by tampering with one database.
  - askmike 5y ago
    If the whole world uses DigitalOcean for NFTs sure, but maybe we end up in a world where there are many providers. And not one that controls everything (by which point it's not centralized). Similar to right now many crypto is stored in exchanges but not one exchange holds all.
    - soco 5y ago
      I can hack into those providers as well, right? My worry was that the chain of trust is broken by definition - as soon as you store things outside the chain. I really don't understand why one would dilute the value proposition of the blockchain like that. If I have a Ferrari I shouldn't put monster truck wheels on it only because it can't drive over speed bumps - it kills the "ferrari-ness".
      - askmike 5y ago
        > My worry was that the chain of trust is broken by definition - as soon as you store things outside the chain. From the chain perspective they never really leave the chain. They are either locked (most L2 solutions such as Bitcoin Lightning) or they are held by someone else (most centralized custodians, including exchanges). So the worst that can happen is that the locked/held coins get "stolen".
      - josephg 5y ago
        > My worry was that the chain of trust is broken by definition As I understand it, the idea is you put the data itself off chain but keep hashes on chain. Anyone who downloads the data can verify it by checking that the hash matches what is stored on chain.
        soco 5y ago
        Uh, no, you store nothing of sorts. Which is the problem. According to ERC-721 (NFT standard) you store exactly three things: the name, a cute pic and the URI to its definition file somewhere else (not even that definition has a hash, not that it would help anything).
  - pa7x1 5y ago
    > But storing things off-chain kinda kills the entire concept, doesn't it? If I hack into DigitalOcean I can mess everybody's NFTs by tampering with one database. It's not about storing off-chain, you compute off-chain and post to the network a cryptographic proof of the computation. Rollups provide something akin to lossless compression proofs of computation. You execute the computation off-chain with high throughput and post a proof to the Ethereum network, this proof contains everything necessary to verify the correct execution of the computation. Sounds mind-blowing but we can thank smart mathematicians for figuring out the cryptography that makes it possible. This means that we can scale off-chain while enjoying the security guarantees of the blockchain. These techniques allow scaling the network throughput towards the 1000-4000 transactions per second range. Which together with data-availability sharding will push the throughput towards the 100K transactions per second range. To be noted that this is not anymore a theoretical construction, these things are live running today on Ethereum. You can check the different solutions as well as detailed explanations of their trade-offs, limitations, etc... Here: https://l2beat.com https://l2beat.com
    - soco 5y ago
      NFT definition is stored off-chain. Which means the security you defined on the chain protects only the URI to a random file or some database - which can be modified any time DigitalOcean or the hacker decides to modify. So you're right, we can create quickly and safely keys to the metal front door, while the back door is propped with a stick.
      - proto-n 5y ago
        What you are saying is that an certificate of authenticity is useless because you can burn the artwork with a torch. Those two things are mostly unrelated.
        soco 5y ago
        I say the certificate of authenticity can be easily forged or destroyed with no way to know what it once contained. And because the entire reason to exist of an NFT is based on this certificate of authenticity (unlike a real world artwork which can be touched and estimated by a specialist), I see a problem right there. Of course this is a problem only if the NFT has an artistic value, which is an entire discussion per se.
- fastball 5y ago
  PoS is much cheaper computationally than PoW so it absolutely does increase the throughput of a network.
  - proto-n 5y ago
    Not really, the computational cost of PoW is not related to the throughput. PoW is not the work that the nodes put into processing transactions, PoW is by definition a useless computation, and it being useless is neccessary for the game theory behind it to work. You can have the same amount of PoW on very little or very high throughput networks, the two are almost completely orthogonal.
    - fossuser 5y ago
      You're right that the specific computation of PoW is supposed to be useless for game theory reasons [0], but the computation requirement itself still delays updating the network (while block size constrains how many transactions can happen between each block update). It takes time for those updates to get published back across the network. If you drop the computation requirement and move enforcement to validators and slashing you can easily 10x-100x this without off chain layer 2 hacks. I was originally skeptical of this because it gives up the computational security guarantees of PoW in favor of game theory guarantees, but I was ultimately persuaded after reading more about it. I think there's a place for both, digital gold like BTC with very low throughput and slow transactions for holding value and rarely moving currency, and ETH (and tokens backed by ETH's protocol) for everything else. With maybe some special situations for something like Zcash. [0]: https://bitcoin.stackexchange.com/questions/97030/beginners-question-why-must-proof-of-work-be-useless https://bitcoin.stackexchange.com/questions/97030/beginners-...
      - proto-n 5y ago
        > the computation requirement itself still delays updating the network Yes, but that's intentional and configurable, e.g. the ten minutes of average time between blocks on the btc chain. You could very easily lower that value by modifying the difficulty adjustment formula. The same amount of pow would be done for a unit of time (say 1 hour), but with higher throughput through more frequent blocks. At that point this becomes a discussion about propagation times, network quality and node speeds, all unrelated to pow. Or am I misunderstanding what you said?
- fossuser 5y ago
  Why does PoS have little to do with transaction costs? I thought it enabled massive throughput without the need for block computation? Am I wrong? Layer 2 is a hack given the current constraints, but it comes with its own trade offs that I think are worse.
creshal 5y ago
Hasn't it "been making progress" for the past 3 years or so?
hirako2000 5y ago
It's been making progress for years. And switch was delayed many times already. It may come soon, or it may never come.
jstx1 5y ago
> There are already billions being staked in ETH2 validators today in preparation for the switch I find it mindblowing that people willingly lock in so much money given how uncertain the whole thing is. There's no specific explanation about what happens if the 2.0 release is delayed repeatedly (like it has been in the past) or if it isn't successful and fails in some way. There's a lot of "trust Vitalik" going around which contradicts everything crypto pretends to be about.
- fossuser 5y ago
  Lack of leadership is why BTC elevated a con artist pretending to be satoshi and is still arguing over block size. I think hard improvements require effective coordination and someone who can pull that off. Vitalik is part of the reason I think ETH is more likely to be successful than competitors in the space (in addition to their head start).
  - drawkbox 5y ago
    A programming language needs a BDFL in the early days of design and value creation. Even content/entertainment creation needs a director, a novel should have only one writer and a game should have a consistent design. However, a "distributed" financial system that requires a BDFL is a single point of failure.
  - xiphias2 5y ago
    ETH had only one war so far (ETH vs ETC) where Vitalik won the leadership role. But at some point governments will want to control Vitalik (which isn't that hard, as he's just 1 person). I believe that something like the blocksize wars with BTC is inevitable in the ETH space as well.
    - fossuser 5y ago
      Vitalik's role is dependent on consensus of most of the community - he's not a dictator. He won ETH vs. ETC because the majority of the community thought he was right. If that changes then he'll lose his influence (imo), but from listening to him I think he's a pretty earnest guy and I've been impressed [0]. [0]: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/intellectual-honesty-cryptocurrency-more-vitalik-buterin/id351953012?i=1000511637460 https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/intellectual-honesty-c...

Animats 5y ago

Ah, yes, the Etherium conversion to proof of stake, scheduled for January 2020. Then December 2020. Right now, there is no hard date.

proto-n 5y ago

Proof of stake has little to do with transaction costs. The roadmap to scaling is sharding + layer 2 tech (optimistic and zk rollup, some of it is already live like arbitrum).

soco 5y ago
But storing things off-chain kinda kills the entire concept, doesn't it? If I hack into DigitalOcean I can mess everybody's NFTs by tampering with one database.
- askmike 5y ago
  If the whole world uses DigitalOcean for NFTs sure, but maybe we end up in a world where there are many providers. And not one that controls everything (by which point it's not centralized). Similar to right now many crypto is stored in exchanges but not one exchange holds all.
  - soco 5y ago
    I can hack into those providers as well, right? My worry was that the chain of trust is broken by definition - as soon as you store things outside the chain. I really don't understand why one would dilute the value proposition of the blockchain like that. If I have a Ferrari I shouldn't put monster truck wheels on it only because it can't drive over speed bumps - it kills the "ferrari-ness".
    - askmike 5y ago
      > My worry was that the chain of trust is broken by definition - as soon as you store things outside the chain. From the chain perspective they never really leave the chain. They are either locked (most L2 solutions such as Bitcoin Lightning) or they are held by someone else (most centralized custodians, including exchanges). So the worst that can happen is that the locked/held coins get "stolen".
    - josephg 5y ago
      > My worry was that the chain of trust is broken by definition As I understand it, the idea is you put the data itself off chain but keep hashes on chain. Anyone who downloads the data can verify it by checking that the hash matches what is stored on chain.
      - soco 5y ago
        Uh, no, you store nothing of sorts. Which is the problem. According to ERC-721 (NFT standard) you store exactly three things: the name, a cute pic and the URI to its definition file somewhere else (not even that definition has a hash, not that it would help anything).
- pa7x1 5y ago
  > But storing things off-chain kinda kills the entire concept, doesn't it? If I hack into DigitalOcean I can mess everybody's NFTs by tampering with one database. It's not about storing off-chain, you compute off-chain and post to the network a cryptographic proof of the computation. Rollups provide something akin to lossless compression proofs of computation. You execute the computation off-chain with high throughput and post a proof to the Ethereum network, this proof contains everything necessary to verify the correct execution of the computation. Sounds mind-blowing but we can thank smart mathematicians for figuring out the cryptography that makes it possible. This means that we can scale off-chain while enjoying the security guarantees of the blockchain. These techniques allow scaling the network throughput towards the 1000-4000 transactions per second range. Which together with data-availability sharding will push the throughput towards the 100K transactions per second range. To be noted that this is not anymore a theoretical construction, these things are live running today on Ethereum. You can check the different solutions as well as detailed explanations of their trade-offs, limitations, etc... Here: https://l2beat.com https://l2beat.com
  - soco 5y ago
    NFT definition is stored off-chain. Which means the security you defined on the chain protects only the URI to a random file or some database - which can be modified any time DigitalOcean or the hacker decides to modify. So you're right, we can create quickly and safely keys to the metal front door, while the back door is propped with a stick.
    - proto-n 5y ago
      What you are saying is that an certificate of authenticity is useless because you can burn the artwork with a torch. Those two things are mostly unrelated.
      - soco 5y ago
        I say the certificate of authenticity can be easily forged or destroyed with no way to know what it once contained. And because the entire reason to exist of an NFT is based on this certificate of authenticity (unlike a real world artwork which can be touched and estimated by a specialist), I see a problem right there. Of course this is a problem only if the NFT has an artistic value, which is an entire discussion per se.
fastball 5y ago
PoS is much cheaper computationally than PoW so it absolutely does increase the throughput of a network.
- proto-n 5y ago
  Not really, the computational cost of PoW is not related to the throughput. PoW is not the work that the nodes put into processing transactions, PoW is by definition a useless computation, and it being useless is neccessary for the game theory behind it to work. You can have the same amount of PoW on very little or very high throughput networks, the two are almost completely orthogonal.
  - fossuser 5y ago
    You're right that the specific computation of PoW is supposed to be useless for game theory reasons [0], but the computation requirement itself still delays updating the network (while block size constrains how many transactions can happen between each block update). It takes time for those updates to get published back across the network. If you drop the computation requirement and move enforcement to validators and slashing you can easily 10x-100x this without off chain layer 2 hacks. I was originally skeptical of this because it gives up the computational security guarantees of PoW in favor of game theory guarantees, but I was ultimately persuaded after reading more about it. I think there's a place for both, digital gold like BTC with very low throughput and slow transactions for holding value and rarely moving currency, and ETH (and tokens backed by ETH's protocol) for everything else. With maybe some special situations for something like Zcash. [0]: https://bitcoin.stackexchange.com/questions/97030/beginners-question-why-must-proof-of-work-be-useless https://bitcoin.stackexchange.com/questions/97030/beginners-...
    - proto-n 5y ago
      > the computation requirement itself still delays updating the network Yes, but that's intentional and configurable, e.g. the ten minutes of average time between blocks on the btc chain. You could very easily lower that value by modifying the difficulty adjustment formula. The same amount of pow would be done for a unit of time (say 1 hour), but with higher throughput through more frequent blocks. At that point this becomes a discussion about propagation times, network quality and node speeds, all unrelated to pow. Or am I misunderstanding what you said?
fossuser 5y ago
Why does PoS have little to do with transaction costs? I thought it enabled massive throughput without the need for block computation? Am I wrong? Layer 2 is a hack given the current constraints, but it comes with its own trade offs that I think are worse.

creshal 5y ago

Hasn't it "been making progress" for the past 3 years or so?

hirako2000 5y ago

It's been making progress for years. And switch was delayed many times already. It may come soon, or it may never come.

jstx1 5y ago

> There are already billions being staked in ETH2 validators today in preparation for the switch I find it mindblowing that people willingly lock in so much money given how uncertain the whole thing is. There's no specific explanation about what happens if the 2.0 release is delayed repeatedly (like it has been in the past) or if it isn't successful and fails in some way. There's a lot of "trust Vitalik" going around which contradicts everything crypto pretends to be about.

fossuser 5y ago
Lack of leadership is why BTC elevated a con artist pretending to be satoshi and is still arguing over block size. I think hard improvements require effective coordination and someone who can pull that off. Vitalik is part of the reason I think ETH is more likely to be successful than competitors in the space (in addition to their head start).
- drawkbox 5y ago
  A programming language needs a BDFL in the early days of design and value creation. Even content/entertainment creation needs a director, a novel should have only one writer and a game should have a consistent design. However, a "distributed" financial system that requires a BDFL is a single point of failure.
- xiphias2 5y ago
  ETH had only one war so far (ETH vs ETC) where Vitalik won the leadership role. But at some point governments will want to control Vitalik (which isn't that hard, as he's just 1 person). I believe that something like the blocksize wars with BTC is inevitable in the ETH space as well.
  - fossuser 5y ago
    Vitalik's role is dependent on consensus of most of the community - he's not a dictator. He won ETH vs. ETC because the majority of the community thought he was right. If that changes then he'll lose his influence (imo), but from listening to him I think he's a pretty earnest guy and I've been impressed [0]. [0]: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/intellectual-honesty-cryptocurrency-more-vitalik-buterin/id351953012?i=1000511637460 https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/intellectual-honesty-c...