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How difficult would it be to stake Ethereum, supposing you could afford a multiple of 32 eth? I know you can join cooperatives for this purpose, but then it’s

by eloff 4y ago

How difficult would it be to stake Ethereum, supposing you could afford a multiple of 32 eth? I know you can join cooperatives for this purpose, but then it’s not your crypto anymore and this space is filled with thieves and con artists. It’s something I’ve been kicking around as an idea for a while as part of a diversified portfolio, if eth drops to a point where I could afford 32. I’m extremely skeptical of cryptocurrencies, but eth is the best of them and the network transaction volume is supposedly in the neighborhood with Visa ( something I find hard to believe.)

cmckn 4y ago
> the network transaction volume is supposedly in the neighborhood with Visa ( something I find hard to believe.) I think the PR line is that PoS ETH can “scale to 100,000 TPS”, but it’s currently pushing 15-30 [1]. Visa does much more, though various figures are reported from 1,750 to 24,000. So, grains of salt and all that. [1] https://etherscan.io/ https://etherscan.io/
- patriksvensson 4y ago
  Correct, the plan is to scale to that level but currently is not doing that. The current L1 (Ethereum Mainnet) + L2 combined TPS can be seen here https://ethtps.info/ https://ethtps.info/ Important to note that Ethereum embraces the idea that L2's will provide a lot of the scale and L1 will remain the base, main layer of security. So the goal isn't for L1 to scale massively, but to be able to support a healthy ecosystem of secure L2's which scale in different ways!
- DennisP 4y ago
  It's a little more complicated than that. For one, Visa just does funds transfers. If Ethereum just transferred ETH, it could do 700 tx/sec, based on the gas limit per block divided by the 20K gas for a simple ETH transfer. A lot of Ethereum transactions are more complex and use more gas. Second, second-layer "rollups" already support transaction rates up to a couple thousand per second, without losing base-layer security guarantees. Essentially they compress the transactions on chain. (Actual traffic is much lower than that, so far.) The longer-term plan is to move to rollups in a big way, and add a form of data sharding to multiply the on-chain data storage. That's where the 100K/sec comes from.
  - dmitriid 4y ago
    > If Ethereum just transferred ETH, it could do 700 tx/sec So... Still an order of magnitude less than Visa. > A lot of Ethereum transactions are more complex and use more gas. How complex are they, are they a significant number, and dies this explain the abysmal transaction rates? Visa aside, on Singles Day AliPay does 1 to 1.5 billion transactions in one day. Okay. AliPay is an outlier. Klarna does about 2 million transactions per day, an average of 23 per second (it's significantly higher during peak hours, and lower during off-peak hours. Source: worked at Klarna). The transaction includes: client lookup (a complicated affair that differs from country to country and session to session), credit score calculation, order set up, payment (out of a several dozen different options) set up... all while conforming to banking and local regulations across 45 countries. Anything in eth anywhere close to that complexity-wise? > Second, second-layer "rollups" already support transaction rates up to a couple thousand per second So layer 2 batches transaction into a batch that then gets batched on layer 1 into a bugger batch that is then written in one go to the blockchain. Congrats, you've reinvented batch processing.
    - rafale 4y ago
      You are not making an effort to appreciate the opposite point if view. An order of magnitude for a young, decentralized, trustless and permissionless network is quite an engineering feat. How complex? -> Turing complete. Also there is more to L2s than batching. Their aim is to maintain the security guarantees of the L1 without sacrificing availability. Plus, Zk proofs and merkle trees allow for great data compression in the rollup.
      - dmitriid 4y ago
        > You are not making an effort to appreciate the opposite point if view. I stopped making an effort five-seven years ago for many obvious reasons. > How complex? -> Turing complete. Ah yes. Unlike every other system in the world that isn't? Turing completeness isn't a feat. It's such a trivial thing that people arrive at it by accident. Now the claim was "ethereum is abysmally slow because it runs complex things". What complex things are there that warrant this abysmal performance? > Also there is more to L2s than batching. Their aim is to maintain the security guarantees Yeah, yeah. It is batching for any intent and purpose. Do you really think batching in "traditional" systems is done without guarantees etc.?
- lekevicius 4y ago
  You are right, but a better place to follow progress is https://ethtps.info/ https://ethtps.info/. It shows TPS across all layer-2s. Current network demand doesn’t really require them, but after EIP-4844, “100 000 TPS” should be possible.
patriksvensson 4y ago
I suggest checking the /r/ethstaker/ (https://www.reddit.com/r/ethstaker/ https://www.reddit.com/r/ethstaker/) community if you are interested in staking. I've been staking from genesis block and has required very little upkeep. Dive in!
krupan 4y ago
The real problem right now is you can't unstake any eth you have staked. The developers promise it's coming soon, but personally I wouldn't stake any until then.
- latchkey 4y ago
  It is in testnet now. Given that they successfully transitioned an entire consensus change and things didn't implode (yet), I'm feeling a bit more optimistic that they can do withdrawals.
- pa7x1 4y ago
  https://withdrawalsdevnet1.ethpandaops.io/ https://withdrawalsdevnet1.ethpandaops.io/ Testnets already happening. Q1 2023 on the table.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
krupan 4y ago
Remember that Visa transactions are not equal to Bitcoin/Ethereum transactions. A visa transaction is just a promise of payment at some future date, probably. That's why they can have such a high rate. Bitcoin and Ethereum transactions are settled cash in your wallet. Apples and oranges. Bitcoin has the lightning network based on Bitcoin smart contracts that can do Visa-like rates of Visa-like transactions. I don't know if Ethereum has anything like that.
- DennisP 4y ago
  Ethereum does have a Lightning-style network, but everybody sorta lost interest when rollups were invented.
yokem55 4y ago
If you are interested in running what is referred to as a 'solo' validator, it isn't that difficult if you already have some linux sysadmin experience. There are several good guides around setting up the physical hardware, the node software, generating the validator key(s), making the staking deposit and then running the validator.[1][2][3] Then there is a very helpful community called EthStaker - they have a subreddit at r/ethstaker and a discord (invite should be available in the subreddit). If you want something a little more automated, Dappnode is a well regarded web based front-end and the Rocketpool node stack makes things very easy to be an operator for their pool using a TUI. There are a lot of options, with a wide range of requirement and capabilities. [1]https://www.coincashew.com/coins/overview-eth/guide-or-how-to-setup-a-validator-on-eth2-mainnet https://www.coincashew.com/coins/overview-eth/guide-or-how-t... [2]https://someresat.medium.com/ https://someresat.medium.com/ [3]https://eth-docker.net/ https://eth-docker.net/
hbrn 4y ago
It doesn't seem to be that hard, but keep in mind that staking requires you to be actively validating. There are major penalties for screwing up (attacking the network), and minor penalties even for going offline. You still need hardware, network, and electricity to run the validator.
robocat 4y ago
Over many years, the 32 ETH limit really screws everyone in the world who can’t afford to stake $40k USD. Choices are: use custodial staking (share your keys with custodian - risky), use non-custodial staking (keeps your keys private but has costs e.g. Lido charges 10% of your staking rewards), use an L2 coin (risks), use a financial proxy for Etherium (ugggh). I guess running your own node means you can’t use a cold wallet, so security costs/risks are high?
- yokem55 4y ago
  > Choices are: use custodial staking (share your keys with custodian - risky), use non-custodial staking (keeps your keys private but has costs e.g. Lido charges 10% of your staking rewards), use an L2 coin (risks), use a financial proxy for Etherium (ugggh). Rocketpool is non-custodial, allows you to run your own node with about 17.6 eth (16 eth + 1.6 eth worth of their token), and then earn a commission from the folks contributing the other 16 eth and not running a node. There is a decent amount of smart contract risk and risk around the value of the token, but it is a generally working protocol. > I guess running your own node means you can’t use a cold wallet, so security costs/risks are high? To answer the security concern - The staking keys can only be used for validation activities, and can't be used to spend the funds. When depositing the stake, you can specify a normal ethereum address where withdrawn funds will go to, and that address can be controlled with a hardware or cold paper wallet/signer. The worst an attacker who compromised your node and took your staking keys could do is get you slashed (a little more then a 1 eth penalty in normal circumstances), which would be of no benefit to them.
  - robocat 4y ago
    > The worst an attacker who compromised your node and took your staking keys could do is get you slashed Or maybe do some of the “Byzantine validator” attacks in the paper? Thank you for the staking keys info - I find it difficult to grok crypto systems.
- DennisP 4y ago
  They do hope to lower the 32 ETH limit, but it's a scaling challenge on the number of stakers.
nibbleshifter 4y ago
In practice: pretty simple. You can do it at home if you have decently reliable internet and power. You don't need five nines of uptime, you need like, two. You don't get subject to slashing for your node going offline, you only get slashed if your node is doing shit out of consensus like actively cooperating in double spends.
- trifurcate 4y ago
  > You don't get subject to slashing for your node going offline Look up "inactivity leak". If enough staked value (>1/3) is offline, those nodes get slashed until >2/3 of the total stake is online again.
anonymousDan 4y ago
Apart from the solid advice below, I would probably suggest practicing cor a while on a testnet to see can you meet the required availability requirements.
TimJRobinson 4y ago
Its about as difficult as setting up an Ubuntu desktop PC. Can get a NUC + 16gb ram + 2TB SSD and that will be more than enough. For software Rocketpool has a really nice guide + configuration GUI, and you only need 16eth for it and you get more rewards than from a normal staking node. It's still fully self custodial.

by eloff 4y ago

cmckn 4y ago

> the network transaction volume is supposedly in the neighborhood with Visa ( something I find hard to believe.) I think the PR line is that PoS ETH can “scale to 100,000 TPS”, but it’s currently pushing 15-30 [1]. Visa does much more, though various figures are reported from 1,750 to 24,000. So, grains of salt and all that. [1] https://etherscan.io/ https://etherscan.io/

patriksvensson 4y ago
Correct, the plan is to scale to that level but currently is not doing that. The current L1 (Ethereum Mainnet) + L2 combined TPS can be seen here https://ethtps.info/ https://ethtps.info/ Important to note that Ethereum embraces the idea that L2's will provide a lot of the scale and L1 will remain the base, main layer of security. So the goal isn't for L1 to scale massively, but to be able to support a healthy ecosystem of secure L2's which scale in different ways!
DennisP 4y ago
It's a little more complicated than that. For one, Visa just does funds transfers. If Ethereum just transferred ETH, it could do 700 tx/sec, based on the gas limit per block divided by the 20K gas for a simple ETH transfer. A lot of Ethereum transactions are more complex and use more gas. Second, second-layer "rollups" already support transaction rates up to a couple thousand per second, without losing base-layer security guarantees. Essentially they compress the transactions on chain. (Actual traffic is much lower than that, so far.) The longer-term plan is to move to rollups in a big way, and add a form of data sharding to multiply the on-chain data storage. That's where the 100K/sec comes from.
- dmitriid 4y ago
  > If Ethereum just transferred ETH, it could do 700 tx/sec So... Still an order of magnitude less than Visa. > A lot of Ethereum transactions are more complex and use more gas. How complex are they, are they a significant number, and dies this explain the abysmal transaction rates? Visa aside, on Singles Day AliPay does 1 to 1.5 billion transactions in one day. Okay. AliPay is an outlier. Klarna does about 2 million transactions per day, an average of 23 per second (it's significantly higher during peak hours, and lower during off-peak hours. Source: worked at Klarna). The transaction includes: client lookup (a complicated affair that differs from country to country and session to session), credit score calculation, order set up, payment (out of a several dozen different options) set up... all while conforming to banking and local regulations across 45 countries. Anything in eth anywhere close to that complexity-wise? > Second, second-layer "rollups" already support transaction rates up to a couple thousand per second So layer 2 batches transaction into a batch that then gets batched on layer 1 into a bugger batch that is then written in one go to the blockchain. Congrats, you've reinvented batch processing.
  - rafale 4y ago
    You are not making an effort to appreciate the opposite point if view. An order of magnitude for a young, decentralized, trustless and permissionless network is quite an engineering feat. How complex? -> Turing complete. Also there is more to L2s than batching. Their aim is to maintain the security guarantees of the L1 without sacrificing availability. Plus, Zk proofs and merkle trees allow for great data compression in the rollup.
    - dmitriid 4y ago
      > You are not making an effort to appreciate the opposite point if view. I stopped making an effort five-seven years ago for many obvious reasons. > How complex? -> Turing complete. Ah yes. Unlike every other system in the world that isn't? Turing completeness isn't a feat. It's such a trivial thing that people arrive at it by accident. Now the claim was "ethereum is abysmally slow because it runs complex things". What complex things are there that warrant this abysmal performance? > Also there is more to L2s than batching. Their aim is to maintain the security guarantees Yeah, yeah. It is batching for any intent and purpose. Do you really think batching in "traditional" systems is done without guarantees etc.?
lekevicius 4y ago
You are right, but a better place to follow progress is https://ethtps.info/ https://ethtps.info/. It shows TPS across all layer-2s. Current network demand doesn’t really require them, but after EIP-4844, “100 000 TPS” should be possible.

patriksvensson 4y ago

I suggest checking the /r/ethstaker/ (https://www.reddit.com/r/ethstaker/ https://www.reddit.com/r/ethstaker/) community if you are interested in staking. I've been staking from genesis block and has required very little upkeep. Dive in!

krupan 4y ago

The real problem right now is you can't unstake any eth you have staked. The developers promise it's coming soon, but personally I wouldn't stake any until then.

latchkey 4y ago
It is in testnet now. Given that they successfully transitioned an entire consensus change and things didn't implode (yet), I'm feeling a bit more optimistic that they can do withdrawals.
pa7x1 4y ago
https://withdrawalsdevnet1.ethpandaops.io/ https://withdrawalsdevnet1.ethpandaops.io/ Testnets already happening. Q1 2023 on the table.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]

krupan 4y ago

Remember that Visa transactions are not equal to Bitcoin/Ethereum transactions. A visa transaction is just a promise of payment at some future date, probably. That's why they can have such a high rate. Bitcoin and Ethereum transactions are settled cash in your wallet. Apples and oranges. Bitcoin has the lightning network based on Bitcoin smart contracts that can do Visa-like rates of Visa-like transactions. I don't know if Ethereum has anything like that.

DennisP 4y ago
Ethereum does have a Lightning-style network, but everybody sorta lost interest when rollups were invented.

yokem55 4y ago

If you are interested in running what is referred to as a 'solo' validator, it isn't that difficult if you already have some linux sysadmin experience. There are several good guides around setting up the physical hardware, the node software, generating the validator key(s), making the staking deposit and then running the validator.[1][2][3] Then there is a very helpful community called EthStaker - they have a subreddit at r/ethstaker and a discord (invite should be available in the subreddit). If you want something a little more automated, Dappnode is a well regarded web based front-end and the Rocketpool node stack makes things very easy to be an operator for their pool using a TUI. There are a lot of options, with a wide range of requirement and capabilities. [1]https://www.coincashew.com/coins/overview-eth/guide-or-how-to-setup-a-validator-on-eth2-mainnet https://www.coincashew.com/coins/overview-eth/guide-or-how-t... [2]https://someresat.medium.com/ https://someresat.medium.com/ [3]https://eth-docker.net/ https://eth-docker.net/

hbrn 4y ago

It doesn't seem to be that hard, but keep in mind that staking requires you to be actively validating. There are major penalties for screwing up (attacking the network), and minor penalties even for going offline. You still need hardware, network, and electricity to run the validator.

robocat 4y ago

Over many years, the 32 ETH limit really screws everyone in the world who can’t afford to stake $40k USD. Choices are: use custodial staking (share your keys with custodian - risky), use non-custodial staking (keeps your keys private but has costs e.g. Lido charges 10% of your staking rewards), use an L2 coin (risks), use a financial proxy for Etherium (ugggh). I guess running your own node means you can’t use a cold wallet, so security costs/risks are high?

yokem55 4y ago
> Choices are: use custodial staking (share your keys with custodian - risky), use non-custodial staking (keeps your keys private but has costs e.g. Lido charges 10% of your staking rewards), use an L2 coin (risks), use a financial proxy for Etherium (ugggh). Rocketpool is non-custodial, allows you to run your own node with about 17.6 eth (16 eth + 1.6 eth worth of their token), and then earn a commission from the folks contributing the other 16 eth and not running a node. There is a decent amount of smart contract risk and risk around the value of the token, but it is a generally working protocol. > I guess running your own node means you can’t use a cold wallet, so security costs/risks are high? To answer the security concern - The staking keys can only be used for validation activities, and can't be used to spend the funds. When depositing the stake, you can specify a normal ethereum address where withdrawn funds will go to, and that address can be controlled with a hardware or cold paper wallet/signer. The worst an attacker who compromised your node and took your staking keys could do is get you slashed (a little more then a 1 eth penalty in normal circumstances), which would be of no benefit to them.
- robocat 4y ago
  > The worst an attacker who compromised your node and took your staking keys could do is get you slashed Or maybe do some of the “Byzantine validator” attacks in the paper? Thank you for the staking keys info - I find it difficult to grok crypto systems.
DennisP 4y ago
They do hope to lower the 32 ETH limit, but it's a scaling challenge on the number of stakers.

nibbleshifter 4y ago

In practice: pretty simple. You can do it at home if you have decently reliable internet and power. You don't need five nines of uptime, you need like, two. You don't get subject to slashing for your node going offline, you only get slashed if your node is doing shit out of consensus like actively cooperating in double spends.

trifurcate 4y ago
> You don't get subject to slashing for your node going offline Look up "inactivity leak". If enough staked value (>1/3) is offline, those nodes get slashed until >2/3 of the total stake is online again.

anonymousDan 4y ago

Apart from the solid advice below, I would probably suggest practicing cor a while on a testnet to see can you meet the required availability requirements.

TimJRobinson 4y ago

Its about as difficult as setting up an Ubuntu desktop PC. Can get a NUC + 16gb ram + 2TB SSD and that will be more than enough. For software Rocketpool has a really nice guide + configuration GUI, and you only need 16eth for it and you get more rewards than from a normal staking node. It's still fully self custodial.