7 ms·

I confess deep ignorance, here, but: Why would miners go along with this switch, given it's going to eliminate their profits? Why wouldn't they just fork the

I confess deep ignorance, here, but: Why would miners go along with this switch, given it's going to eliminate their profits? Why wouldn't they just fork the chain and continue to run a PoW version? What would force people to switch to the new PoS version?

rawrmaan 4y ago
There will be forks, but only the PoS one will have stablecoins with actual backing (e.g. any value at all): https://decrypt.co/107094/circle-will-not-support-ethereum-proof-work-fork https://decrypt.co/107094/circle-will-not-support-ethereum-p...
- toinewx 4y ago
  justin sun has said his "stable" coin usdd will support the pow fork
  - DennisP 4y ago
    USDD has a market cap of $745 million. By comparison, USDC is at $54 billion, USDT is $67 billion, and both are only supporting PoS. https://cointelegraph.com/news/usdt-issuer-tether-also-confirms-its-throwing-weight-behind-the-post-merge-ethereum-chain https://cointelegraph.com/news/usdt-issuer-tether-also-confi...
  - baby 4y ago
    What an ass
  - ecommerceguy 4y ago
    This made me chuckle. How anyone thinks Sun has any interest in anything besides enriching himself is delusional. Pro pump and dumper, thats all. He is an artist at the top of his game, I'll give him that!
ruuda 4y ago
I wondered about this for a long time as well. Exchanges, RPC providers like Infura, wallet developers, dapp websites, etc., wouldn't endorse such a fork, so it wouldn't gain adoption. It might still happen, but it would fail to capture much value, similar to Ethereum Classic.
- BaseballPhysics 4y ago
  The world has changed a lot since then. If the crypto crash has demonstrated anything, it's that there's an enormously incestuous relationship between these organizations. We have exchanges running mining operations, market participants investing in crypto mining companies, etc. A massive economic implosion in the mining community is going to have knock-on effects throughout the ecosystem, and I can imagine market participants not wanting that to happen. In the end I suspect you're right, but I don't think it's safe to say that only the miners are interested in preserving the status quo, and I don't think it's a foregone conclusion that a major PoW-based fork won't live on and divide the ecosystem.
  - eterps 4y ago
    > but I don't think it's safe to say that only the miners are interested in preserving the status quo I also am sure the miners will keep the PoW based chain alive. But I have trouble finding reasons why users, developers and businesses would support the PoW based chain in the long term.
    - BaseballPhysics 4y ago
      > But I have trouble finding reasons why users, developers and businesses would support the PoW based chain in the long term. I explained why: Cross-investment within the ecosystem. If, I dunno, say Coinbase has a large investment in a mining operation (and I'm completely making this up, to be clear), they're not gonna want a move to PoS because it'll destroy that investment. We know for a fact that there's a ton of this type of cross-investment in the ecosystem, as evidenced by the ripple effects from the collapse of organizations like 3AC. It's not at all unreasonable to conclude that similar relationships could create incentives to keep the miners solvent.
TGIF 4y ago
They almost certainly will, as has happened before (see Ethereum classic) but the Ethereum foundation and thus most of the users will continue on to the proof of stake chain.
tylersmith 4y ago
Nothing forces people to follow any set of consensus rules. There will be a fork that continues on with PoW, but most users will choose to follow PoS because that's where all the business and developer support is.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
paconbork 4y ago
Ultimately it would be the community deciding to value the PoS fork as "real Ethereum". Something similar happened with ETH and Ethereum Classic, where classic is the unforked version that nobody cares about. A PoW fork will almost certainly exist, but that doesn't mean anyone has to use it and indeed some major players like Chainlink have already announced that they will not support a PoW fork
- TremendousJudge 4y ago
  Classic is the one that didn't rollback transactions after the DAO scam right?
  - SeanAnderson 4y ago
    Correct.
  - yokem55 4y ago
    To be pedantic - mainnet Ethereum didn't 'roll-back' those hack transactions either. They are still there on etherscan if you want to look for them. The DAO hard fork introduced an unsigned transaction that moved the hacker's funds to a refund to a refund contract.
    - TremendousJudge 4y ago
      I found about this fairly recently. You seem knowledgeable about the topic. Can I ask you how did the community react to this/what do they think of this episode today? Because having full control over the coins is one of the big reasons why proponents are against regular banks and state-issued currency, yet here there was a clear breach of that control.
      - yokem55 4y ago
        The developers don't have full control like that. They were only able to execute TheDAO hard fork because the community was very small at the time and was reasonably united behind the developers in carrying it out. It was something of a unicorn of circumstances that it was even possible because the funds were still locked up for a period of time and the hacker couldn't sell them, which meant there was only a single loser in the fork (the hacker), and a large community of winners or people who weren't directly effected either way. I personally think the refund stage of things should not have happened and the funds should have been burned instead, simply as a means to make sure the investors learned that risks of interacting with ethereum contracts were still very real. But that said I wasn't involved in crypto at all then, so, what do I know...

rawrmaan 4y ago

There will be forks, but only the PoS one will have stablecoins with actual backing (e.g. any value at all): https://decrypt.co/107094/circle-will-not-support-ethereum-proof-work-fork https://decrypt.co/107094/circle-will-not-support-ethereum-p...

toinewx 4y ago
justin sun has said his "stable" coin usdd will support the pow fork
- DennisP 4y ago
  USDD has a market cap of $745 million. By comparison, USDC is at $54 billion, USDT is $67 billion, and both are only supporting PoS. https://cointelegraph.com/news/usdt-issuer-tether-also-confirms-its-throwing-weight-behind-the-post-merge-ethereum-chain https://cointelegraph.com/news/usdt-issuer-tether-also-confi...
- baby 4y ago
  What an ass
- ecommerceguy 4y ago
  This made me chuckle. How anyone thinks Sun has any interest in anything besides enriching himself is delusional. Pro pump and dumper, thats all. He is an artist at the top of his game, I'll give him that!

ruuda 4y ago

I wondered about this for a long time as well. Exchanges, RPC providers like Infura, wallet developers, dapp websites, etc., wouldn't endorse such a fork, so it wouldn't gain adoption. It might still happen, but it would fail to capture much value, similar to Ethereum Classic.

BaseballPhysics 4y ago
The world has changed a lot since then. If the crypto crash has demonstrated anything, it's that there's an enormously incestuous relationship between these organizations. We have exchanges running mining operations, market participants investing in crypto mining companies, etc. A massive economic implosion in the mining community is going to have knock-on effects throughout the ecosystem, and I can imagine market participants not wanting that to happen. In the end I suspect you're right, but I don't think it's safe to say that only the miners are interested in preserving the status quo, and I don't think it's a foregone conclusion that a major PoW-based fork won't live on and divide the ecosystem.
- eterps 4y ago
  > but I don't think it's safe to say that only the miners are interested in preserving the status quo I also am sure the miners will keep the PoW based chain alive. But I have trouble finding reasons why users, developers and businesses would support the PoW based chain in the long term.
  - BaseballPhysics 4y ago
    > But I have trouble finding reasons why users, developers and businesses would support the PoW based chain in the long term. I explained why: Cross-investment within the ecosystem. If, I dunno, say Coinbase has a large investment in a mining operation (and I'm completely making this up, to be clear), they're not gonna want a move to PoS because it'll destroy that investment. We know for a fact that there's a ton of this type of cross-investment in the ecosystem, as evidenced by the ripple effects from the collapse of organizations like 3AC. It's not at all unreasonable to conclude that similar relationships could create incentives to keep the miners solvent.

TGIF 4y ago

They almost certainly will, as has happened before (see Ethereum classic) but the Ethereum foundation and thus most of the users will continue on to the proof of stake chain.

tylersmith 4y ago

Nothing forces people to follow any set of consensus rules. There will be a fork that continues on with PoW, but most users will choose to follow PoS because that's where all the business and developer support is.

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

paconbork 4y ago

Ultimately it would be the community deciding to value the PoS fork as "real Ethereum". Something similar happened with ETH and Ethereum Classic, where classic is the unforked version that nobody cares about. A PoW fork will almost certainly exist, but that doesn't mean anyone has to use it and indeed some major players like Chainlink have already announced that they will not support a PoW fork

TremendousJudge 4y ago
Classic is the one that didn't rollback transactions after the DAO scam right?
- SeanAnderson 4y ago
  Correct.
- yokem55 4y ago
  To be pedantic - mainnet Ethereum didn't 'roll-back' those hack transactions either. They are still there on etherscan if you want to look for them. The DAO hard fork introduced an unsigned transaction that moved the hacker's funds to a refund to a refund contract.
  - TremendousJudge 4y ago
    I found about this fairly recently. You seem knowledgeable about the topic. Can I ask you how did the community react to this/what do they think of this episode today? Because having full control over the coins is one of the big reasons why proponents are against regular banks and state-issued currency, yet here there was a clear breach of that control.
    - yokem55 4y ago
      The developers don't have full control like that. They were only able to execute TheDAO hard fork because the community was very small at the time and was reasonably united behind the developers in carrying it out. It was something of a unicorn of circumstances that it was even possible because the funds were still locked up for a period of time and the hacker couldn't sell them, which meant there was only a single loser in the fork (the hacker), and a large community of winners or people who weren't directly effected either way. I personally think the refund stage of things should not have happened and the funds should have been burned instead, simply as a means to make sure the investors learned that risks of interacting with ethereum contracts were still very real. But that said I wasn't involved in crypto at all then, so, what do I know...