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> On a compute basis, blockchain networks don’t scale except by becoming the very same plutocratic and centralized systems they allegedly were designed to repla

> On a compute basis, blockchain networks don’t scale except by becoming the very same plutocratic and centralized systems they allegedly were designed to replace. That sentence right there is when I stopped reading and realized the author doesn't understand the technology they are criticizing. The word "plutocratic" is linked to the Wikipedia definition for Proof of Stake. PoS is not meant to increase scalability, its meant to increase efficiency and network decentralization and reduce the cost of running a validator. Switching to PoS on its own doesn't increase the ability of the network to handle more transactions or speed them up.

okareaman 5y ago
> the author doesn't understand the technology they are criticizing I've been following Stephen Diehl and he seems to have a greater understanding than most, even if he is consistently bearish on the technology and I'm not always in agreement. I don't see the issue you are having: adjective: plutocratic relating to or characterized by government by the wealthy. Proof of stake (PoS) protocols are a class of consensus mechanisms for blockchains that work by selecting validators in proportion to their quantity of holdings in the associated cryptocurrency.
- drdeca 5y ago
  >> On a compute basis, blockchain networks don’t scale except by becoming the very same plutocratic [...] > The word "plutocratic" is linked to the Wikipedia definition for Proof of Stake. > PoS is not meant to increase scalability carlosdp isn't saying "because PoS isn't plutocratic, the claim 'can only scale by becoming plutocratic by using PoS' doesn't hold", Rather, carlosdp is saying that "because PoS isn't the thing being proposed for scaling, but is instead for different things, the claim 'can only scale by becoming plutocratic by using PoS' doesn't hold".
  - Traster 5y ago
    I don't see how increasing efficiency is seriously distinct from increasing scalability? It seems to me that efficiency is a solution to scalability.
    - drdeca 5y ago
      scalability is about things like "how many transactions per second you can handle", efficiency (in this context) is more about e.g. "how much is the cost of electricity used (and other such costs), divided by how many transactions". You cannot increase number of transactions by just increasing the amount of electricity; it doesn't work that way. If an intervention reduces the amount of electricity used without changing the amount of transactions that can happen, that increases the efficiency, but this does not thereby increase scalability. So, something which reduces electricity use and hardware use, but doesn't substantially influence the amount of transactions that can go through, improves efficiency, but doesn't improve scalability.
jazzyjackson 5y ago
…how is efficiency different from scale? Right now Eth cannot accomodate the transactional demands of the world because it is extremely inefficient and costly (gas fees) I don’t claim to be an eth or PoS expert, but is it not the case that the transition to PoS is to lower transaction fees and prepare the network for sharding? Maybe sharding for scale is a totally separate issue, but I don’t understand why they would prioritize PoS if it wasn’t necessary for the next step of becoming a “world computer” I don’t want to come across as too flippant, I would like to understand the optimistic viewpoint.
- drdeca 5y ago
  my understanding is that much of the motivation for PoS is to avoid the electricity usage, and in some but not other ways of measuring it possibly has some better security properties, not really increasing the throughput or gas fees?
  - jerojero 5y ago
    PoS is more scalable because if you need faster validation all you do is add more parallel nodes. With PoW all the validators are competing against each other to be the fastest whereas with PoS there is no competition but consensus. Eth2.0 is supposed to be much faster than Eth1.0 anyway, they say it'll be capable of doing thousands of transactions per second (as opposed to the ~15 it is doing right now). It's partly due to the switch to PoS. This might also bring down costs, gas fees are high because when you have only 15 transactions that can go through every second and you have thousands, millions of transactions requested every minute... well, a lot of pressure is built and that pressure is reflected on the gas price. But if you were to have a system that is capable of doing thousands, even hundreds of thousands of TPS then you would have very quick transactions and very high availability which would bring fees down. Really, the only people that don't want POS are miners, a node in Eth2.0 is meant to be run on any home set up. Even a laptop, the most important part is for it to never go down.
    - drdeca 5y ago
      Ok, I may be wrong there? By parallel validators, do you mean more validators for each block of the... beacon chain(?) or, do you mean like as validators on different shards? As you can see I haven’t been keeping up with the details

okareaman 5y ago

> the author doesn't understand the technology they are criticizing I've been following Stephen Diehl and he seems to have a greater understanding than most, even if he is consistently bearish on the technology and I'm not always in agreement. I don't see the issue you are having: adjective: plutocratic relating to or characterized by government by the wealthy. Proof of stake (PoS) protocols are a class of consensus mechanisms for blockchains that work by selecting validators in proportion to their quantity of holdings in the associated cryptocurrency.

drdeca 5y ago
>> On a compute basis, blockchain networks don’t scale except by becoming the very same plutocratic [...] > The word "plutocratic" is linked to the Wikipedia definition for Proof of Stake. > PoS is not meant to increase scalability carlosdp isn't saying "because PoS isn't plutocratic, the claim 'can only scale by becoming plutocratic by using PoS' doesn't hold", Rather, carlosdp is saying that "because PoS isn't the thing being proposed for scaling, but is instead for different things, the claim 'can only scale by becoming plutocratic by using PoS' doesn't hold".
- Traster 5y ago
  I don't see how increasing efficiency is seriously distinct from increasing scalability? It seems to me that efficiency is a solution to scalability.
  - drdeca 5y ago
    scalability is about things like "how many transactions per second you can handle", efficiency (in this context) is more about e.g. "how much is the cost of electricity used (and other such costs), divided by how many transactions". You cannot increase number of transactions by just increasing the amount of electricity; it doesn't work that way. If an intervention reduces the amount of electricity used without changing the amount of transactions that can happen, that increases the efficiency, but this does not thereby increase scalability. So, something which reduces electricity use and hardware use, but doesn't substantially influence the amount of transactions that can go through, improves efficiency, but doesn't improve scalability.

jazzyjackson 5y ago

…how is efficiency different from scale? Right now Eth cannot accomodate the transactional demands of the world because it is extremely inefficient and costly (gas fees) I don’t claim to be an eth or PoS expert, but is it not the case that the transition to PoS is to lower transaction fees and prepare the network for sharding? Maybe sharding for scale is a totally separate issue, but I don’t understand why they would prioritize PoS if it wasn’t necessary for the next step of becoming a “world computer” I don’t want to come across as too flippant, I would like to understand the optimistic viewpoint.

drdeca 5y ago
my understanding is that much of the motivation for PoS is to avoid the electricity usage, and in some but not other ways of measuring it possibly has some better security properties, not really increasing the throughput or gas fees?
- jerojero 5y ago
  PoS is more scalable because if you need faster validation all you do is add more parallel nodes. With PoW all the validators are competing against each other to be the fastest whereas with PoS there is no competition but consensus. Eth2.0 is supposed to be much faster than Eth1.0 anyway, they say it'll be capable of doing thousands of transactions per second (as opposed to the ~15 it is doing right now). It's partly due to the switch to PoS. This might also bring down costs, gas fees are high because when you have only 15 transactions that can go through every second and you have thousands, millions of transactions requested every minute... well, a lot of pressure is built and that pressure is reflected on the gas price. But if you were to have a system that is capable of doing thousands, even hundreds of thousands of TPS then you would have very quick transactions and very high availability which would bring fees down. Really, the only people that don't want POS are miners, a node in Eth2.0 is meant to be run on any home set up. Even a laptop, the most important part is for it to never go down.
  - drdeca 5y ago
    Ok, I may be wrong there? By parallel validators, do you mean more validators for each block of the... beacon chain(?) or, do you mean like as validators on different shards? As you can see I haven’t been keeping up with the details