4 ms·

But you still need a majority to acknowledge the report > Slashing is triggered by the evidence of the offence being included in a beacon chain block. Once the

But you still need a majority to acknowledge the report > Slashing is triggered by the evidence of the offence being included in a beacon chain block. Once the evidence is confirmed by the network, the offending validator (or validators) is slashed. It is a powerless mechanic if the majority of validates don’t want to play along.

493579620678 4y ago
There may be other solutions or defence mechanisms, but one solution would be to fork again and remove the Ether those validators have staked from your chain as part of your fork. A chain is defined by a set of rules that everyone on the chain agrees to abide by. Braking the rules damages the economic utility of the chain, so the Ether on the chain where the validators colluded to break the rules would be worth less, as a result of their actions. The validators are locked on that chain (as they can't prevent a fork from excluding them), so they have a strong incentive against harming the chain. Ethereum is not majoritarian. I don't have to abide by the will of the majority. I only need to come to a consensus about the rules and state of the chain with the people with whom I want to share the chain. PoS makes it much easier to escape a malicious majority compared to PoW where the hashing power majority can follow the minority anywhere unless the minority is willing to switch to a different hashing algorithm. Even then, the majority could sell their mining equipment and buy new equipment that will work on the new chain on the same terms as that chain's honest minority can. With PoS, the malicious majority would need to buy new Ether from the honest minority who can then just fork again after having made a profit on the attack, and can continue to do that until the malicious majority runs out of resources or realizes that they cannot censor a fork in Ethereum's PoS system.
- oneoff786 4y ago
  > Braking the rules damages the economic utility of the chain, so the Ether on the chain where the validators colluded to break the rules would be worth less, as a result of their actions. So you’re going to create a new fork, remove the money from the majority of the wealthy stakeholders who are governing the system, and expect this one to be be seen as legitimate? The one that is explicitly giving the finger to the wealthy? Good luck!
  - 493579620678 4y ago
    I don't think legitimacy is a meaningful concept in this context. I would use the chain with the greatest utility, which is determined by whether I like the rules, whether the rules are consistently and predictably enforced, and whether other people I want to interact with are using that chain. Whether the people who use the chain have more Ether or more computer power compared to the people who use a competing chain doesn't affect utility. While I don't think it's meaningful to say that one chain is more legitimate than another, if I was forced to make such a deamination in this case, I would consider the chain where the rules are consistently and predictably enforced in a way that leads to predictable outcomes more legitimate than a chain where validators have colluded to arbitrarily subvert the enforcement of the rules.
    - oneoff786 4y ago
      Legitimacy doesn’t matter in the context of currency? I’m not sure the markets will agree.
mattdesl 4y ago
Do you have a source for this? As I understand from the spec[1], any block proposer can submit a slashing report while including their block in the chain, and the protocol (ie: the client software that everybody runs) will reward them automatically if the slashing conditions are satisfied. The majority of validators could perhaps block this by all running forks of the various consensus client software, with some code changed to set the reward to zero, but why would they do that? [1] https://github.com/ethereum/consensus-specs/blob/dev/specs/phase0/validator.md#proposer-slashings https://github.com/ethereum/consensus-specs/blob/dev/specs/p...
- oneoff786 4y ago
  Anyone can include a slashing report in their block, but it does nothing unless the block is approved by a majority. If we imagine a 90/10 split of opinions that leads to a hard fork, the 90 majority can either be satisfied and with their fork and be nice or they can stonewall the 10% fork and refuse to approve any blocks that supports the idea that they deserve to be slashed. Because the only thing that can punish the majority is the approval of the majority. And because allowing another fork to exist reduces the value of the other forks. And because it would just be nicer if instead of having two forks we just kicked out all those annoying validates we don’t agree with.
  - mattdesl 4y ago
    In your scenario, the 10% who are running forked software risk losing all their deposit by double-signing blocks on the same network and chain ID as the majority 90%. In practice, if 10% wanted to split off from the majority and run incompatible clients, they would be forced to use a different network or chain id, which means they are running a different blockchain.
    - oneoff786 4y ago
      In my scenario the it is the 90% that is double signing, and they are risking nothing because it is the same 90% that gets to punish them. If the 10% wants to fork off and do a completely different blockchain, what happens to the folks who aren’t colluding either way? I mean, while we’re down to just throw away people’s stakes, why not do so for everyone who isn’t explicitly on our side?

493579620678 4y ago

There may be other solutions or defence mechanisms, but one solution would be to fork again and remove the Ether those validators have staked from your chain as part of your fork. A chain is defined by a set of rules that everyone on the chain agrees to abide by. Braking the rules damages the economic utility of the chain, so the Ether on the chain where the validators colluded to break the rules would be worth less, as a result of their actions. The validators are locked on that chain (as they can't prevent a fork from excluding them), so they have a strong incentive against harming the chain. Ethereum is not majoritarian. I don't have to abide by the will of the majority. I only need to come to a consensus about the rules and state of the chain with the people with whom I want to share the chain. PoS makes it much easier to escape a malicious majority compared to PoW where the hashing power majority can follow the minority anywhere unless the minority is willing to switch to a different hashing algorithm. Even then, the majority could sell their mining equipment and buy new equipment that will work on the new chain on the same terms as that chain's honest minority can. With PoS, the malicious majority would need to buy new Ether from the honest minority who can then just fork again after having made a profit on the attack, and can continue to do that until the malicious majority runs out of resources or realizes that they cannot censor a fork in Ethereum's PoS system.

oneoff786 4y ago
> Braking the rules damages the economic utility of the chain, so the Ether on the chain where the validators colluded to break the rules would be worth less, as a result of their actions. So you’re going to create a new fork, remove the money from the majority of the wealthy stakeholders who are governing the system, and expect this one to be be seen as legitimate? The one that is explicitly giving the finger to the wealthy? Good luck!
- 493579620678 4y ago
  I don't think legitimacy is a meaningful concept in this context. I would use the chain with the greatest utility, which is determined by whether I like the rules, whether the rules are consistently and predictably enforced, and whether other people I want to interact with are using that chain. Whether the people who use the chain have more Ether or more computer power compared to the people who use a competing chain doesn't affect utility. While I don't think it's meaningful to say that one chain is more legitimate than another, if I was forced to make such a deamination in this case, I would consider the chain where the rules are consistently and predictably enforced in a way that leads to predictable outcomes more legitimate than a chain where validators have colluded to arbitrarily subvert the enforcement of the rules.
  - oneoff786 4y ago
    Legitimacy doesn’t matter in the context of currency? I’m not sure the markets will agree.

mattdesl 4y ago

Do you have a source for this? As I understand from the spec[1], any block proposer can submit a slashing report while including their block in the chain, and the protocol (ie: the client software that everybody runs) will reward them automatically if the slashing conditions are satisfied. The majority of validators could perhaps block this by all running forks of the various consensus client software, with some code changed to set the reward to zero, but why would they do that? [1] https://github.com/ethereum/consensus-specs/blob/dev/specs/phase0/validator.md#proposer-slashings https://github.com/ethereum/consensus-specs/blob/dev/specs/p...

oneoff786 4y ago
Anyone can include a slashing report in their block, but it does nothing unless the block is approved by a majority. If we imagine a 90/10 split of opinions that leads to a hard fork, the 90 majority can either be satisfied and with their fork and be nice or they can stonewall the 10% fork and refuse to approve any blocks that supports the idea that they deserve to be slashed. Because the only thing that can punish the majority is the approval of the majority. And because allowing another fork to exist reduces the value of the other forks. And because it would just be nicer if instead of having two forks we just kicked out all those annoying validates we don’t agree with.
- mattdesl 4y ago
  In your scenario, the 10% who are running forked software risk losing all their deposit by double-signing blocks on the same network and chain ID as the majority 90%. In practice, if 10% wanted to split off from the majority and run incompatible clients, they would be forced to use a different network or chain id, which means they are running a different blockchain.
  - oneoff786 4y ago
    In my scenario the it is the 90% that is double signing, and they are risking nothing because it is the same 90% that gets to punish them. If the 10% wants to fork off and do a completely different blockchain, what happens to the folks who aren’t colluding either way? I mean, while we’re down to just throw away people’s stakes, why not do so for everyone who isn’t explicitly on our side?