7 ms·

Miners are run by humans too, though, who could also theoretically attack the network. In both PoW and PoS they are incentivized not to.

anonporridge 5y ago
The difference between miners and stakers... If miners start acting bad, anyone else on the planet can acquire chips and electricity to peacefully countervail their power. If stakers start acting bad, the only options you have are 1) abandon the monetary system or 2) violently coerce the top stakers and torture them into giving you control of their stake. This is why bitcoin is the only cryptocurrency likely to become the truly global, monetary asset that nation states use for trade and monetary reserves. No way in hell nation states will trust Vitalik and his gang to honestly secure their money.
- etherael 5y ago
  And why would you trust Greg Maxwell and his gang?
  - anonporridge 5y ago
    There's no intrinsic part of bitcoin that requires you to trust them. He might own a large amount of bitcoin, or have some sway in bitcoin core development, but that does not equal unilateral control authority of the protocol.
    - etherael 5y ago
      So next time they organise a soft-fork and have their crony exchanges insist on allocating the ticker to their soft-fork for whatever, that's not going to consist of a "failure of trust" on their part at all? And before you claim it couldn't happen, keep in mind they already did it to keep the chain locked to maximum of 7 tx per second. If you can convince people to let that slide, you can convince them to let near anything slide. It fundamentally makes the currency useless. For all Ethereum's flaws, at least people understand the limitations of their trust model and their processes. The mythology built around BTC is completely unhinged from reality and people have no clue how inaccurate it is when compared with the facts on the ground.
      - thebean11 5y ago
        You realize if there is a fork in Bitcoin, your coins would exist on both sides of it right? If they do something you don't like you can continue using the other fork, there is literally nothing stopping you or anybody else, and you did not lose any funds. > they already did it to keep the chain locked to maximum of 7 tx per second Are you talking about Bitcoin Cash? Bitcoin Cash forked off of Bitcoin, not the other way around.
        etherael 5y ago
        > You realize if there is a fork in Bitcoin, your coins would exist on both sides of it right? In theory. In practice a lot of people will never bother to track splits, understand the intricacies of what a given fork means; case in point here where you claim that Bitcoin Cash split off BTC despite their pursuing the original architecture of Bitcoin proper, and BTC going a completely different direction with lightning forced in as a core part of the architecture and total on chain throughput permanently limited to a level which makes it useless as anything more than a toy. > If they do something you don't like you can continue using the other fork, there is literally nothing stopping you or anybody else, and you did not lose any funds The important thing is that they can set the characteristics of the monetary base of BTC to arbitrarily whatever they want without limit, and this has effects on what that monetary base is able to accomplish. For example; they can force it to never be used as a peer to peer electronic currency for the world, it doesn't take much of a reach to imagine who might want to do such a thing and what other goals and projects they might want to steer BTC toward, that may well have nothing to do with the interests of BTC holders nor the reasons they've convinced themselves that they're holding it. Their interests don't matter though, and the reasons they think they're holding it don't matter either. What matters is what the core council of developers announce from on high is the future direction of the chain, all else be damned, that's what you're going to be stuck with. At the moment you think "I've been duped" your options are either to divest and have your goals thwarted, or fork off and lose enormous amount of momentum and historical record and most likely if history is any example, only one in a million will even notice what happened and what your fork was for. You come out ten years later as a settlement layer for central banks and shake your head wondering what the hell happened, then you realise you never really understood it to begin with.
- thebean11 5y ago
  I disagree that this is a realistic threat in a world where Ethereum tokens are reasonably distributed. Stakers will simply defect and sell their tokens as the price increases. Conversely, this kind of attack would bring the price down as investors lose confidence, further encouraging people to defect and either validate honestly or sell tokens.
  - anonporridge 5y ago
    Can you prove that tokens are sufficiently distributed? It is trivial for a large staker to masquerade as many individuals. Can you ensure that no small group will ever one take take the a controlling stake, either by time and patience or by violent force, coercing or killing other stakers? And yes, it would cause people to lose confidence, which is why this kind of attack probably won't happen unless Ethereum or some other PoS system achieves a much greater level of global dominance where it has become too big to fail.
    - thebean11 5y ago
      No I agree you can't prove they are distributed, but I don't see the threat as realistic. I also think the only reason for someone to take a controlling stake and attack the network would be to kill Ethereum and make everyone lose confidence. Bitcoin is susceptible to the exact same attack, someone could build or buy enough mining power and cause a huge reorg to wreak havok. I take your point that Bitcoin could more easily recover from this, as new mining hardware can be built by honest participants unlike tokens, but it would take too long. It would be too late to restore confidence at that point anyway. I think both networks are resistant to the attack for the same reason, it's just too expensive. You could argue that Ethereum is actually more resistant, as buying tokens drives up the price. Bitcoin has the opposite economies of scale. The more chips an attacker produces, the better they get at making them, and the more cheaply they can amass hashrate.
- capableweb 5y ago
  > If stakers start acting bad This is the whole point of slashing/rewards in PoS. They have no reason to act bad, as if they do, the network itself loses value, so anything they can have gained, will result in losing it. It's a equilibrium where you can't gain anything by destroying the network.

anonporridge 5y ago

The difference between miners and stakers... If miners start acting bad, anyone else on the planet can acquire chips and electricity to peacefully countervail their power. If stakers start acting bad, the only options you have are 1) abandon the monetary system or 2) violently coerce the top stakers and torture them into giving you control of their stake. This is why bitcoin is the only cryptocurrency likely to become the truly global, monetary asset that nation states use for trade and monetary reserves. No way in hell nation states will trust Vitalik and his gang to honestly secure their money.

etherael 5y ago
And why would you trust Greg Maxwell and his gang?
- anonporridge 5y ago
  There's no intrinsic part of bitcoin that requires you to trust them. He might own a large amount of bitcoin, or have some sway in bitcoin core development, but that does not equal unilateral control authority of the protocol.
  - etherael 5y ago
    So next time they organise a soft-fork and have their crony exchanges insist on allocating the ticker to their soft-fork for whatever, that's not going to consist of a "failure of trust" on their part at all? And before you claim it couldn't happen, keep in mind they already did it to keep the chain locked to maximum of 7 tx per second. If you can convince people to let that slide, you can convince them to let near anything slide. It fundamentally makes the currency useless. For all Ethereum's flaws, at least people understand the limitations of their trust model and their processes. The mythology built around BTC is completely unhinged from reality and people have no clue how inaccurate it is when compared with the facts on the ground.
    - thebean11 5y ago
      You realize if there is a fork in Bitcoin, your coins would exist on both sides of it right? If they do something you don't like you can continue using the other fork, there is literally nothing stopping you or anybody else, and you did not lose any funds. > they already did it to keep the chain locked to maximum of 7 tx per second Are you talking about Bitcoin Cash? Bitcoin Cash forked off of Bitcoin, not the other way around.
      - etherael 5y ago
        > You realize if there is a fork in Bitcoin, your coins would exist on both sides of it right? In theory. In practice a lot of people will never bother to track splits, understand the intricacies of what a given fork means; case in point here where you claim that Bitcoin Cash split off BTC despite their pursuing the original architecture of Bitcoin proper, and BTC going a completely different direction with lightning forced in as a core part of the architecture and total on chain throughput permanently limited to a level which makes it useless as anything more than a toy. > If they do something you don't like you can continue using the other fork, there is literally nothing stopping you or anybody else, and you did not lose any funds The important thing is that they can set the characteristics of the monetary base of BTC to arbitrarily whatever they want without limit, and this has effects on what that monetary base is able to accomplish. For example; they can force it to never be used as a peer to peer electronic currency for the world, it doesn't take much of a reach to imagine who might want to do such a thing and what other goals and projects they might want to steer BTC toward, that may well have nothing to do with the interests of BTC holders nor the reasons they've convinced themselves that they're holding it. Their interests don't matter though, and the reasons they think they're holding it don't matter either. What matters is what the core council of developers announce from on high is the future direction of the chain, all else be damned, that's what you're going to be stuck with. At the moment you think "I've been duped" your options are either to divest and have your goals thwarted, or fork off and lose enormous amount of momentum and historical record and most likely if history is any example, only one in a million will even notice what happened and what your fork was for. You come out ten years later as a settlement layer for central banks and shake your head wondering what the hell happened, then you realise you never really understood it to begin with.
thebean11 5y ago
I disagree that this is a realistic threat in a world where Ethereum tokens are reasonably distributed. Stakers will simply defect and sell their tokens as the price increases. Conversely, this kind of attack would bring the price down as investors lose confidence, further encouraging people to defect and either validate honestly or sell tokens.
- anonporridge 5y ago
  Can you prove that tokens are sufficiently distributed? It is trivial for a large staker to masquerade as many individuals. Can you ensure that no small group will ever one take take the a controlling stake, either by time and patience or by violent force, coercing or killing other stakers? And yes, it would cause people to lose confidence, which is why this kind of attack probably won't happen unless Ethereum or some other PoS system achieves a much greater level of global dominance where it has become too big to fail.
  - thebean11 5y ago
    No I agree you can't prove they are distributed, but I don't see the threat as realistic. I also think the only reason for someone to take a controlling stake and attack the network would be to kill Ethereum and make everyone lose confidence. Bitcoin is susceptible to the exact same attack, someone could build or buy enough mining power and cause a huge reorg to wreak havok. I take your point that Bitcoin could more easily recover from this, as new mining hardware can be built by honest participants unlike tokens, but it would take too long. It would be too late to restore confidence at that point anyway. I think both networks are resistant to the attack for the same reason, it's just too expensive. You could argue that Ethereum is actually more resistant, as buying tokens drives up the price. Bitcoin has the opposite economies of scale. The more chips an attacker produces, the better they get at making them, and the more cheaply they can amass hashrate.
capableweb 5y ago
> If stakers start acting bad This is the whole point of slashing/rewards in PoS. They have no reason to act bad, as if they do, the network itself loses value, so anything they can have gained, will result in losing it. It's a equilibrium where you can't gain anything by destroying the network.