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This is a great article. Buterin's critique of Bitcoin was very interesting.

by michaelwww 4y ago

iLoveOncall 4y ago
- habitue 4y ago
  Also, you're free to look at his actual statements and evaluate them based on how reasonable they seem to you. Not everything has to be evaluated from the perspective of conflict of interest
  - iLoveOncall 4y ago
    He is trying to sell Proof of Stake because Etherium is migrating to it. It has as many flaws as Proof of Work and is even less decentralized. Blockchain is a rotten technology anyway so there’s nothing good to see there.
    - moneywoes 4y ago
      Are you bullish on any crypto
      - iLoveOncall 4y ago
        No, crypto as a whole offer no advantage over fiat but major inconveniences, and it is built on top of the worst piece of technology ever created by mankind.
    - googlryas 4y ago
      It's not like it is just some fact of nature that Ethereum is migrating to proof of stake, and Vitalik is trying to find some post-hoc justification for it. It's migrating exactly because Vitalik and others convinced a lot of people involved in Ethereum that it should migrate to PoS. And why did he convince them of that? Because he believes it is a better system. Have you presented what you believe to be the flaws in the system to any Ethereum developers? Do you think you understand PoS generally or specifically their PoS implementation better than they do?
      - verdverm 4y ago
        https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gyP0uxxB6V8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gyP0uxxB6V8
        googlryas 4y ago
        Why do you suspect Ethereum developers aren't reverting all of their plans and sticking with PoW after seeing this video?
        verdverm 4y ago
        Their relative benefit from the new rules is greater?
        googlryas 4y ago
        How are they benefiting by destroying the network that they have a lot of assets in?
        verdverm 4y ago
        Why does centralization or regulatory capture imply destruction of the network? Maybe it means the opposite and more people will be willing to use it for financial transactions? Only time will tell
        googlryas 4y ago
        Well, I don't think it does. But if one is calling it a "monumental blunder", I have to assume one thinks the network is going to be damaged in some way.
    - brobinson 4y ago
      It is more decentralized, though? It's also more expensive to perform a 51% attack against it. https://i.redd.it/5lhlmwdg27j91.png https://i.redd.it/5lhlmwdg27j91.png (imgur mirror: https://imgur.com/a/eGNG7r0 https://imgur.com/a/eGNG7r0)
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- rvz 4y ago
  Exactly. I disagree with both the points made about both Bitcoin, and Ethereum made by Vitalk. Proof of Work (PoW) is more 'decentralized' and censorship resistant than Proof-of-Stake (PoS) at the cost of burning up the planet and PoS is the direct opposite, and Vitalik knows this and has to do everything he can to protect this and his bags / holdings for the Ethereum fans and maximalists. The problem with Bitcoin is that it cannot realistically be used as a form of payment and it is effectively useless for on-chain payments and unable to scale properly with lots of users just to be better than the current existing payments system as it was meant to be a "decentralized peer-to-peer electronic cash system". Before someone says Lightning, it isn't Bitcoin and defeats the point of using Bitcoin for on-chain payments as the system tends to centralization. As Ethereum becomes more centralized with the Merge, I would expect it to abandon the claim of it being 'decentralized', so it will be just like any other permissioned validator chain that eventually needs to comply with regulations and validators will begin censoring addresses. So for them to be regarded as remotely 'useful', they have to abandon their claims of 'decentralization' because without centralization, they are both useless.
- aaaaaaaaata 4y ago
  https://vitalik.ca/general/2022/04/01/maximalist.html https://vitalik.ca/general/2022/04/01/maximalist.html "In Defense of Bitcoin Maximalism", Vitalik Buterin
adastra22 4y ago
Which critique? I searched for bitcoin in the article and didn’t find anything critiquing Bitcoin itself.
- simonw 4y ago
  This bit in particular was interesting, talking about the comparative security of proof-of-stake Ethereum and proof-of-work Bitcoin. > In the case of Bitcoin, I'm worried for two reasons. First, in the long term, Bitcoin security is going to come entirely from fees, and Bitcoin is just not succeeding at getting the level of fee revenue required to secure what could be a multi-trillion-dollar system. Bitcoin fees are about $300,000 per day and haven't really grown that much over the last five years. Ethereum is much more successful at this, because the Ethereum blockchain is much more designed to support usage and applications. Second, proof of work provides much less security per dollar spent on transaction fees than proof of stake, and Bitcoin migrating away from proof of work seems to be politically infeasible. What would a future look like when there's $5 trillion of Bitcoin, but it only takes $5 billion to attack the chain? I can't bold here, but if I could I would have bolded "What would a future look like when there's $5 trillion of Bitcoin, but it only takes $5 billion to attack the chain? ".
  - once_inc 4y ago
    What would the absolute worst outcome of that attack be? Miners don't have the option of spending from addresses they don't have the private keys of; all they can do is rewrite history to a certain extent. Would it be bothersome? Yes. Would a globally used bitcoin monetary base layer have complete backing of nation-states using it? Yes. Would people be hesitant to transact during the attack? Probably. None of these things are of immediate consequence, while the attacker spends its funds rewriting history and getting blowback from everyone online. Then there is the issue of getting to 51% in the first place, and retaining that 51% once it is clear something nefarious is happening. Many miningpools are conglomerates of individual miners, who certainly have the option of switching to other parties at their whim. I think proof of work is the only viable way currently known to man to ensure a fair, even monetary playing field at global scale. PoS is not proven, and Ethereum does not scale because it optimized for parameters that aren't relevant for a system that is supposed to be online for at least a century, if not longer.

This is a great article. Buterin's critique of Bitcoin was very interesting.

iLoveOncall 4y ago

habitue 4y ago
Also, you're free to look at his actual statements and evaluate them based on how reasonable they seem to you. Not everything has to be evaluated from the perspective of conflict of interest
- iLoveOncall 4y ago
  He is trying to sell Proof of Stake because Etherium is migrating to it. It has as many flaws as Proof of Work and is even less decentralized. Blockchain is a rotten technology anyway so there’s nothing good to see there.
  - moneywoes 4y ago
    Are you bullish on any crypto
    - iLoveOncall 4y ago
      No, crypto as a whole offer no advantage over fiat but major inconveniences, and it is built on top of the worst piece of technology ever created by mankind.
  - googlryas 4y ago
    It's not like it is just some fact of nature that Ethereum is migrating to proof of stake, and Vitalik is trying to find some post-hoc justification for it. It's migrating exactly because Vitalik and others convinced a lot of people involved in Ethereum that it should migrate to PoS. And why did he convince them of that? Because he believes it is a better system. Have you presented what you believe to be the flaws in the system to any Ethereum developers? Do you think you understand PoS generally or specifically their PoS implementation better than they do?
    - verdverm 4y ago
      https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gyP0uxxB6V8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gyP0uxxB6V8
      - googlryas 4y ago
        Why do you suspect Ethereum developers aren't reverting all of their plans and sticking with PoW after seeing this video?
        verdverm 4y ago
        Their relative benefit from the new rules is greater?
        googlryas 4y ago
        How are they benefiting by destroying the network that they have a lot of assets in?
        verdverm 4y ago
        Why does centralization or regulatory capture imply destruction of the network? Maybe it means the opposite and more people will be willing to use it for financial transactions? Only time will tell
        googlryas 4y ago
        Well, I don't think it does. But if one is calling it a "monumental blunder", I have to assume one thinks the network is going to be damaged in some way.
  - brobinson 4y ago
    It is more decentralized, though? It's also more expensive to perform a 51% attack against it. https://i.redd.it/5lhlmwdg27j91.png https://i.redd.it/5lhlmwdg27j91.png (imgur mirror: https://imgur.com/a/eGNG7r0 https://imgur.com/a/eGNG7r0)
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
rvz 4y ago
Exactly. I disagree with both the points made about both Bitcoin, and Ethereum made by Vitalk. Proof of Work (PoW) is more 'decentralized' and censorship resistant than Proof-of-Stake (PoS) at the cost of burning up the planet and PoS is the direct opposite, and Vitalik knows this and has to do everything he can to protect this and his bags / holdings for the Ethereum fans and maximalists. The problem with Bitcoin is that it cannot realistically be used as a form of payment and it is effectively useless for on-chain payments and unable to scale properly with lots of users just to be better than the current existing payments system as it was meant to be a "decentralized peer-to-peer electronic cash system". Before someone says Lightning, it isn't Bitcoin and defeats the point of using Bitcoin for on-chain payments as the system tends to centralization. As Ethereum becomes more centralized with the Merge, I would expect it to abandon the claim of it being 'decentralized', so it will be just like any other permissioned validator chain that eventually needs to comply with regulations and validators will begin censoring addresses. So for them to be regarded as remotely 'useful', they have to abandon their claims of 'decentralization' because without centralization, they are both useless.
aaaaaaaaata 4y ago
https://vitalik.ca/general/2022/04/01/maximalist.html https://vitalik.ca/general/2022/04/01/maximalist.html "In Defense of Bitcoin Maximalism", Vitalik Buterin

adastra22 4y ago

Which critique? I searched for bitcoin in the article and didn’t find anything critiquing Bitcoin itself.

simonw 4y ago
This bit in particular was interesting, talking about the comparative security of proof-of-stake Ethereum and proof-of-work Bitcoin. > In the case of Bitcoin, I'm worried for two reasons. First, in the long term, Bitcoin security is going to come entirely from fees, and Bitcoin is just not succeeding at getting the level of fee revenue required to secure what could be a multi-trillion-dollar system. Bitcoin fees are about $300,000 per day and haven't really grown that much over the last five years. Ethereum is much more successful at this, because the Ethereum blockchain is much more designed to support usage and applications. Second, proof of work provides much less security per dollar spent on transaction fees than proof of stake, and Bitcoin migrating away from proof of work seems to be politically infeasible. What would a future look like when there's $5 trillion of Bitcoin, but it only takes $5 billion to attack the chain? I can't bold here, but if I could I would have bolded "What would a future look like when there's $5 trillion of Bitcoin, but it only takes $5 billion to attack the chain? ".
- once_inc 4y ago
  What would the absolute worst outcome of that attack be? Miners don't have the option of spending from addresses they don't have the private keys of; all they can do is rewrite history to a certain extent. Would it be bothersome? Yes. Would a globally used bitcoin monetary base layer have complete backing of nation-states using it? Yes. Would people be hesitant to transact during the attack? Probably. None of these things are of immediate consequence, while the attacker spends its funds rewriting history and getting blowback from everyone online. Then there is the issue of getting to 51% in the first place, and retaining that 51% once it is clear something nefarious is happening. Many miningpools are conglomerates of individual miners, who certainly have the option of switching to other parties at their whim. I think proof of work is the only viable way currently known to man to ensure a fair, even monetary playing field at global scale. PoS is not proven, and Ethereum does not scale because it optimized for parameters that aren't relevant for a system that is supposed to be online for at least a century, if not longer.