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> If developers could make a small mistake that caused this, imagine what could happen when The Merge goes through. I don't get your comment: Ethereum itself h

> If developers could make a small mistake that caused this, imagine what could happen when The Merge goes through. I don't get your comment: Ethereum itself has worked without any issue since it came out, in 2015 (?) or so. Many smart contracts, not built by the core Ethereum devs, have been exploited, but from Ethereum's point of view everything worked flawlessly. Why would the Ethereum devs, which have create a blockchain working perfectly fine since seven years (including many upgrades), suddenly screw up the merge to PoS badly? I mean: I don't doubt we'll see many more hacks (and I don't know why so many people are so keen on putting so much money in smart contracts) but the people in charge of Ethereum itself seems to be quite competent and have a track records of several years without any exploit to prove it.

lesuorac 4y ago
Not just that but if somebody bad were to happen they can hardfork like they did in the past ... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_DAO_(organization) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_DAO_(organization) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethereum#Launch_and_the_DAO_event_(2014%E2%80%932016) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethereum#Launch_and_the_DAO_ev... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethereum_Classic https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethereum_Classic
latchkey 4y ago
ETH had the benefit of PoW working and proven for years prior to deployment. Switching to an entirely new consensus model, that has never been done before, is complicated and a big reason why it has taken as long as it has. Furthermore, there is a giant target (huge sum of money) on ETH's back now. If you had an exploit for PoS, why would you reveal it early? As the person below also states... they could just fork and fix things, but this time, it will be a lot harder to do so without entirely destroying the value of ETH. This is a massively risky venture that takes more than just hope and prayers. As we've seen in many many hacks over the last few years, even the most competent developers can miss something crucial.
- dannyw 4y ago
  There's hundreds of blockchains using Proof of Stake for years. Finally, if exploited, everyone will just agree to rollback again; there's no destruction of ETH.
  - latchkey 4y ago
    You can't just generalize all PoS as being the same code and execution. ETH is quite different from the rest. Furthermore, none of the other blockchains have even close to the level of value (not just $ amount, but also fame) tied up in them. As for rollback... that's what created ETC, but this time, it is different... with PoS, the 'stake' is tied up in the network. It isn't external, like it is with PoW and isn't as easy to just fork. You're effectively now forced to convince everyone to follow another canonical chain, but you don't have an external way to do so. Forking becomes a lot harder. It also becomes a lot more complicated and hasn't even been done before... how much 'testing' has that gotten?
  - stagas 4y ago
    How are exchanges going to agree to rollback after they have already exchanged those tokens with others? Someone has to burden the loss, so it might as well be the original blockchain that got exploited.
    - latchkey 4y ago
      Yes! This is exactly the premise of Jeff's essay [1] that I mentioned in comments below. This gets messy fast when there is an issue and even worse is that there isn't a published plan for how to deal with things when they do come up. Everyone is betting on it all executing perfectly and given the complexity and value at stake here, chances are that at some point now, or in the future, it won't go well. [1] https://github.com/stickfigure/blog/wiki/Proof-Of-Stake-Wears-No-Clothes https://github.com/stickfigure/blog/wiki/Proof-Of-Stake-Wear...
- DennisP 4y ago
  Ethereum's PoS has been running since December 2020. Right now about 10% of all ETH is deposited on it. What's coming up is the "merge", where the rest of the chain starts looking at the PoS network for choosing blocks, instead of looking at mining difficulty.
tremarley 4y ago
Ethereum has had many bugs, mistakes and flaws. Before 2018, Ethereum has a similar downtime to Solana Ethereum is continuously developed to remove bugs. For example: Until 2017, it was possible to sent a specifically signed transaction (without the correct private key) that resulted in the msg.sender having null sender address. This was fixed in EIP-86

lesuorac 4y ago

Not just that but if somebody bad were to happen they can hardfork like they did in the past ... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_DAO_(organization) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_DAO_(organization) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethereum#Launch_and_the_DAO_event_(2014%E2%80%932016) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethereum#Launch_and_the_DAO_ev... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethereum_Classic https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethereum_Classic

latchkey 4y ago

ETH had the benefit of PoW working and proven for years prior to deployment. Switching to an entirely new consensus model, that has never been done before, is complicated and a big reason why it has taken as long as it has. Furthermore, there is a giant target (huge sum of money) on ETH's back now. If you had an exploit for PoS, why would you reveal it early? As the person below also states... they could just fork and fix things, but this time, it will be a lot harder to do so without entirely destroying the value of ETH. This is a massively risky venture that takes more than just hope and prayers. As we've seen in many many hacks over the last few years, even the most competent developers can miss something crucial.

dannyw 4y ago
There's hundreds of blockchains using Proof of Stake for years. Finally, if exploited, everyone will just agree to rollback again; there's no destruction of ETH.
- latchkey 4y ago
  You can't just generalize all PoS as being the same code and execution. ETH is quite different from the rest. Furthermore, none of the other blockchains have even close to the level of value (not just $ amount, but also fame) tied up in them. As for rollback... that's what created ETC, but this time, it is different... with PoS, the 'stake' is tied up in the network. It isn't external, like it is with PoW and isn't as easy to just fork. You're effectively now forced to convince everyone to follow another canonical chain, but you don't have an external way to do so. Forking becomes a lot harder. It also becomes a lot more complicated and hasn't even been done before... how much 'testing' has that gotten?
- stagas 4y ago
  How are exchanges going to agree to rollback after they have already exchanged those tokens with others? Someone has to burden the loss, so it might as well be the original blockchain that got exploited.
  - latchkey 4y ago
    Yes! This is exactly the premise of Jeff's essay [1] that I mentioned in comments below. This gets messy fast when there is an issue and even worse is that there isn't a published plan for how to deal with things when they do come up. Everyone is betting on it all executing perfectly and given the complexity and value at stake here, chances are that at some point now, or in the future, it won't go well. [1] https://github.com/stickfigure/blog/wiki/Proof-Of-Stake-Wears-No-Clothes https://github.com/stickfigure/blog/wiki/Proof-Of-Stake-Wear...
DennisP 4y ago
Ethereum's PoS has been running since December 2020. Right now about 10% of all ETH is deposited on it. What's coming up is the "merge", where the rest of the chain starts looking at the PoS network for choosing blocks, instead of looking at mining difficulty.

tremarley 4y ago

Ethereum has had many bugs, mistakes and flaws. Before 2018, Ethereum has a similar downtime to Solana Ethereum is continuously developed to remove bugs. For example: Until 2017, it was possible to sent a specifically signed transaction (without the correct private key) that resulted in the msg.sender having null sender address. This was fixed in EIP-86