9 ms·

Thanks for the explanation! I have a few questions: - how does the punishment work ? Do all nodes see that a malicious actor changed the chain and write the ba

by rakoo 4y ago

Thanks for the explanation! I have a few questions: - how does the punishment work ? Do all nodes see that a malicious actor changed the chain and write the bad ideas in some ledger meaning "these nodes just lost X ETH" ? - But if the malicious actor owns 2/3 of validators, what does he care what other nodes do ? They effectively control what block is accepted - is there an advantage to run more than one validator, if you have the money (EDIT: and you don't want to attack the network)? Basically, does having more money gives you more (power, control, anything) ?

entrep 4y ago
> - But if the malicious actor owns 2/3 of validators, what does he care what other nodes do ? They effectively control what block is accepted As I understand it, anyone who owns that amount of ETH would probably be interested in contributing to the trust of the Ethereum blockchain.
- yunohn 4y ago
  Sure, but that wasn’t the question. How does the punishment play out, assuming they’re acting in bad faith?
  - rglullis 4y ago
    If you have 2/3 of the validators, there is no way that you can be punished. You will effectively be able to produce the blocks and tell the network that they are valid. If you don't have that, the most that you can do is to attack the network by proposing bad blocks to slow down block production. Anytime that a (selected) validator proposes a bad block, the other validators that catch your mistake will snitch on you (through attestations) and the validator will get their stake funds slashed. The more your funds are slashed, the less of a chance you will have to be proposing new blocks in the future.
- falcolas 4y ago
  What reason would anyone have to believe in their benevolence? It would be safer to believe in and use their greed and self preservation.
  - mastazi 4y ago
    If you own a large amount of a currency, you want to ensure that the currency in question is trusted, or otherwise that currency would end up losing its value. It is your greed that is guiding you, not your benevolence.
    - troutwine 4y ago
      Eh, I think it’s naive to believe that greed is sufficient protection. Owning a bunch of ETH so you can set ETH on fire would be a waste of money, only so long as the person setting the fire didn’t value the mischief more than the ETH. I don’t see why nation states wouldn’t attack each other by burning down the crypto assets of citizens, either.
      - mastazi 4y ago
        > I think it’s naive to believe that greed is sufficient protection. I never said that, I actually agree with you. I was just explaining GP's point to parent who in my opinion missed it.
        troutwine 4y ago
        Ah, apologies. I read you as agreeing with and clarifying GP's argument.
    - falcolas 4y ago
      One problem with this - speculative assets are at least partially valuable because of their volatility - their ability to appreciate quickly. Even if eth is untrusted for long term value, so long as it has the potential to make money for someone in the short term it's going to continue to get transactions. And, as always, sometimes folks just want to watch the world burn. It's a relatively low investment (~$50k) to become a validator, and the fine's only about $7k (.5 eth). Imagine the damage someone with a few million (say, some baby-boomer who just sold their California duplex) could do if they wanted to.
- boosteri 4y ago
  Why would it need to be a significant amount of ETH? Could someone coordinate an attack on validator nodes, making themselves 67%+ temporarily?
  - stepanhruda 4y ago
    Yes. That’s why diversity of client implementations is important.
- ww520 4y ago
  Fund can be borrowed. As attested in last the couple months, billions of funds were borrowed to bet on the market one way or the other. Borrowing a billion dollars to subvert the network for a short duration sounds like a feasible strategy.
  - stepanhruda 4y ago
    You can’t borrow enough money and immediately take over the network. Those funds need to be staked first in validators with 32 ETH each and you need to control enough validators to control consensus. It’s more difficult than PoW in a way since you can’t just start validating, there is an entry/exit queue.
  - lottin 4y ago
    This isn't argument against PoS, because mining rigs can also be borrowed. Anything can be borrowed.
- rakoo 4y ago
  Call me a pessimist, but I have stopped assuming rationality of all actors acting to secure a long-term future, especially in the world of cryptocurrencies
  - pclmulqdq 4y ago
    PoW is magical in that these actors are strongly incentivized to secure the network. PoS is not the same.
    - rakoo 4y ago
      This was the whole point of blockchains. No one trusts anyone, everyone is in it for themselves only. The Adam Smith model. And it works, if you don't loom at the disastrous environmental impact.
WFHRenaissance 4y ago
1. Punishment mechanisms here are kind of complicated, but in short, you're punished for mainly 2 reasons: being an offline validator, or for an attestation violating. Slashers are entities that enforce the two above rules. If a slasher determines that you're node is down, or that you're committing an attestation violation (i.e. that you're signing more than one attestation in a given epoch mainly). The slasher actually does not get rewarded here. The block proposer who takes the broadcasted slashing and and adds a proof of it to their block proposition, and get what's called a whistleblower reward. Slashing is not meant to profitable, and the whistleblower reward is quite small. We don't need a million slashers, in fact, we could operate with just one... expect the Eth Foundation to run them, among other large players who can spare the resources. 2. Owning 2/3 of nodes economically is kind of silly. You essentially just 51% the network, and everyone else leaves. You're then stuck with a worthless personal currency. Have fun! 3. More than one validator means more validator rewards, and a bit more "power" in that you're a larger component of the general validation network.
- ww520 4y ago
  What are the checking mechanisms that 2/3 of the nodes are not colluding together? In other words how do you prove someone owning 51% or 2/3 of the network?
  - danuker 4y ago
    Here you are asking the most important question. Exchanges hold the most ETH. They are a central collusion point which could cause undue influence on the network. At least it seems they do not own a lot of the existing Eth. https://etherscan.io/accounts https://etherscan.io/accounts
  - randomran01234 4y ago
    Their actions would most likely be visible on the network because it is transparent. The community can then decide whether to activate a fork and punish the colluding nodes.
    - 4y ago
miohtama 4y ago
You can find more details on slashing and penalties in the Validator FAQ: https://launchpad.ethereum.org/en/faq https://launchpad.ethereum.org/en/faq
- rakoo 4y ago
  Wow thanks a lot !
hjorthjort 4y ago
An important and often misunderstood point: Having >2/3rds of validators (or >50% of power in PoW) let's you rewrite the chain back in history, censor txs, etc. You control what transactions go in blocks, and to a certain extent also recent history. HOWEVER, this does not give you the power to steal or rewrite state as you please. You cannot convince the rest of the network that you now own someone else's ETH just because you have supermajority validator power. To take away ETH or change the cabin state in any other way, you need to include a valid and correctly signed transaction. If you include an invalid state change (not caused by a successful and correct transaction) then all other nodes will reject that block, no matter how much validator power or hashing work went into it.
- rakoo 4y ago
  Well this is the same as any blockchain: you can't forge a block with a transaction giving yourself money, but you can double spend the same amount to multiple other accounts. Unless something is different with ETH which I don't know enough
  - cypress66 4y ago
    Double spends are actually much harder here, after slots are finalized (2 epochs, about 12 minutes) but yes it's the same as other blockchains.

by rakoo 4y ago

entrep 4y ago

> - But if the malicious actor owns 2/3 of validators, what does he care what other nodes do ? They effectively control what block is accepted As I understand it, anyone who owns that amount of ETH would probably be interested in contributing to the trust of the Ethereum blockchain.

yunohn 4y ago
Sure, but that wasn’t the question. How does the punishment play out, assuming they’re acting in bad faith?
- rglullis 4y ago
  If you have 2/3 of the validators, there is no way that you can be punished. You will effectively be able to produce the blocks and tell the network that they are valid. If you don't have that, the most that you can do is to attack the network by proposing bad blocks to slow down block production. Anytime that a (selected) validator proposes a bad block, the other validators that catch your mistake will snitch on you (through attestations) and the validator will get their stake funds slashed. The more your funds are slashed, the less of a chance you will have to be proposing new blocks in the future.
falcolas 4y ago
What reason would anyone have to believe in their benevolence? It would be safer to believe in and use their greed and self preservation.
- mastazi 4y ago
  If you own a large amount of a currency, you want to ensure that the currency in question is trusted, or otherwise that currency would end up losing its value. It is your greed that is guiding you, not your benevolence.
  - troutwine 4y ago
    Eh, I think it’s naive to believe that greed is sufficient protection. Owning a bunch of ETH so you can set ETH on fire would be a waste of money, only so long as the person setting the fire didn’t value the mischief more than the ETH. I don’t see why nation states wouldn’t attack each other by burning down the crypto assets of citizens, either.
    - mastazi 4y ago
      > I think it’s naive to believe that greed is sufficient protection. I never said that, I actually agree with you. I was just explaining GP's point to parent who in my opinion missed it.
      - troutwine 4y ago
        Ah, apologies. I read you as agreeing with and clarifying GP's argument.
  - falcolas 4y ago
    One problem with this - speculative assets are at least partially valuable because of their volatility - their ability to appreciate quickly. Even if eth is untrusted for long term value, so long as it has the potential to make money for someone in the short term it's going to continue to get transactions. And, as always, sometimes folks just want to watch the world burn. It's a relatively low investment (~$50k) to become a validator, and the fine's only about $7k (.5 eth). Imagine the damage someone with a few million (say, some baby-boomer who just sold their California duplex) could do if they wanted to.
boosteri 4y ago
Why would it need to be a significant amount of ETH? Could someone coordinate an attack on validator nodes, making themselves 67%+ temporarily?
- stepanhruda 4y ago
  Yes. That’s why diversity of client implementations is important.
ww520 4y ago
Fund can be borrowed. As attested in last the couple months, billions of funds were borrowed to bet on the market one way or the other. Borrowing a billion dollars to subvert the network for a short duration sounds like a feasible strategy.
- stepanhruda 4y ago
  You can’t borrow enough money and immediately take over the network. Those funds need to be staked first in validators with 32 ETH each and you need to control enough validators to control consensus. It’s more difficult than PoW in a way since you can’t just start validating, there is an entry/exit queue.
- lottin 4y ago
  This isn't argument against PoS, because mining rigs can also be borrowed. Anything can be borrowed.
rakoo 4y ago
Call me a pessimist, but I have stopped assuming rationality of all actors acting to secure a long-term future, especially in the world of cryptocurrencies
- pclmulqdq 4y ago
  PoW is magical in that these actors are strongly incentivized to secure the network. PoS is not the same.
  - rakoo 4y ago
    This was the whole point of blockchains. No one trusts anyone, everyone is in it for themselves only. The Adam Smith model. And it works, if you don't loom at the disastrous environmental impact.

WFHRenaissance 4y ago

1. Punishment mechanisms here are kind of complicated, but in short, you're punished for mainly 2 reasons: being an offline validator, or for an attestation violating. Slashers are entities that enforce the two above rules. If a slasher determines that you're node is down, or that you're committing an attestation violation (i.e. that you're signing more than one attestation in a given epoch mainly). The slasher actually does not get rewarded here. The block proposer who takes the broadcasted slashing and and adds a proof of it to their block proposition, and get what's called a whistleblower reward. Slashing is not meant to profitable, and the whistleblower reward is quite small. We don't need a million slashers, in fact, we could operate with just one... expect the Eth Foundation to run them, among other large players who can spare the resources. 2. Owning 2/3 of nodes economically is kind of silly. You essentially just 51% the network, and everyone else leaves. You're then stuck with a worthless personal currency. Have fun! 3. More than one validator means more validator rewards, and a bit more "power" in that you're a larger component of the general validation network.

ww520 4y ago
What are the checking mechanisms that 2/3 of the nodes are not colluding together? In other words how do you prove someone owning 51% or 2/3 of the network?
- danuker 4y ago
  Here you are asking the most important question. Exchanges hold the most ETH. They are a central collusion point which could cause undue influence on the network. At least it seems they do not own a lot of the existing Eth. https://etherscan.io/accounts https://etherscan.io/accounts
- randomran01234 4y ago
  Their actions would most likely be visible on the network because it is transparent. The community can then decide whether to activate a fork and punish the colluding nodes.
  - 4y ago

miohtama 4y ago

You can find more details on slashing and penalties in the Validator FAQ: https://launchpad.ethereum.org/en/faq https://launchpad.ethereum.org/en/faq

rakoo 4y ago
Wow thanks a lot !

hjorthjort 4y ago

An important and often misunderstood point: Having >2/3rds of validators (or >50% of power in PoW) let's you rewrite the chain back in history, censor txs, etc. You control what transactions go in blocks, and to a certain extent also recent history. HOWEVER, this does not give you the power to steal or rewrite state as you please. You cannot convince the rest of the network that you now own someone else's ETH just because you have supermajority validator power. To take away ETH or change the cabin state in any other way, you need to include a valid and correctly signed transaction. If you include an invalid state change (not caused by a successful and correct transaction) then all other nodes will reject that block, no matter how much validator power or hashing work went into it.

rakoo 4y ago
Well this is the same as any blockchain: you can't forge a block with a transaction giving yourself money, but you can double spend the same amount to multiple other accounts. Unless something is different with ETH which I don't know enough
- cypress66 4y ago
  Double spends are actually much harder here, after slots are finalized (2 epochs, about 12 minutes) but yes it's the same as other blockchains.