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Why I’m so “against” Ethereum

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Re: Why I’m so “against” Ethereum

#131

Post by aeternus »

phlip9 wrote: post #124
pouta wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you share those fixes?

First, some Proof-of-Stake setup: 1. Assume we have some set of "validators" who control the global consensus process. They come to consensus on the current global state of the system. These validators are vaguely analogous to miners in Proof-of-Work consensus. 2. These validators have coins bonded as collateral in exchange for more voting power in the consensus process. One key idea necessary for Proof-of-Stake is t…

As a new user in a Proof-of-Stake protocol, how do I determine which chain to follow?

With PoW I can choose the 'longest' chain (chain with the most total work).

Re: Why I’m so “against” Ethereum

#132

Post by CryptoPunk »

aeternus wrote: post #131
phlip9 wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

First, some Proof-of-Stake setup: 1. Assume we have some set of "validators" who control the global consensus process. They come to consensus on the current global state of the system. These validators are vaguely analogous to miners in Proof-of-Work consensus. 2. These validators have coins bonded as collateral in exchange for more voting power in the consensus process. One key idea necessary for Proof-of-Stake is t…

As a new user in a Proof-of-Stake protocol, how do I determine which chain to follow? With PoW I can choose the 'longest' chain (chain with the most total work).

The client you download tells you, by giving you an accurate recent snapshot of the state.

Re: Why I’m so “against” Ethereum

#133

Post by CryptoPunk »

xiphias2 wrote: post #53
snissn wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It takes me about a day to sync parity on a consumer desktop with an ssd and a 7 year old i5 Intel cpu

I guess you're not doing a full sync. Here's an example of a person trying to do it: https://ethereum.stackexchange.com/questions/37348/parity-fu...

An archival node goes beyond a full node and downloads data not needed for full validation.

Re: Why I’m so “against” Ethereum

#134

Post by keymone »

CryptoPunk wrote: post #132
aeternus wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a new user in a Proof-of-Stake protocol, how do I determine which chain to follow? With PoW I can choose the 'longest' chain (chain with the most total work).

The client you download tells you, by giving you an accurate recent snapshot of the state.

So one has to trust distributors of the software?

I mean it’s been known about PoS systems since inception, it’s just funny how it’s supporters never like to admit it.

Re: Why I’m so “against” Ethereum

#135

Post by juliebooth »

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Re: Why I’m so “against” Ethereum

#136

Post by CryptoPunk »

bouncycastle wrote: post #105
erulabs wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Edit: It seems (based on the conversations in this thread) the argument is versus "full", "fast" and "light" sync methods. Full implies personally reverifying the entire chain and every transaction, which takes a week or more. Fast pulls down the entire chain (and all of its data), and takes ~18 hours (what I mentioned above), but still results in a complete Ethereum node. It becomes a philosophical argument if the "…

My understanding that a full sync in Bitcoin means something different than a full sync on Ethereum. Bitcoin's database is modeled on UTXO ( https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unspent_transaction_output ) therefore all clients need to validate all transactions from genesis to calculate final balances. Meanwhile, Ethereum is account based and state is global, and to determine the balances you only need to check the merkl…

Bitcoin nodes could download the most recent UTXO index too. Validating the entire history is necessary in both if you want to trust nothing except the client code you're given.

An archival node in Ethereum goes beyond a full node, and stores data not needed to do full validation.

A full node in Ethereum needs to download about 80 GB I believe, which is a tenth of what an archival node needs to download and store.

Re: Why I’m so “against” Ethereum

#137

Post by CryptoPunk »

keymone wrote: post #134
CryptoPunk wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The client you download tells you, by giving you an accurate recent snapshot of the state.

So one has to trust distributors of the software? I mean it’s been known about PoS systems since inception, it’s just funny how it’s supporters never like to admit it.

Yes but you have to trust the distributors of the software anyway, even in PoW.

Re: Why I’m so “against” Ethereum

#138

Post by keymone »

bouncycastle wrote: post #105
erulabs wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Edit: It seems (based on the conversations in this thread) the argument is versus "full", "fast" and "light" sync methods. Full implies personally reverifying the entire chain and every transaction, which takes a week or more. Fast pulls down the entire chain (and all of its data), and takes ~18 hours (what I mentioned above), but still results in a complete Ethereum node. It becomes a philosophical argument if the "…

My understanding that a full sync in Bitcoin means something different than a full sync on Ethereum. Bitcoin's database is modeled on UTXO ( https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unspent_transaction_output ) therefore all clients need to validate all transactions from genesis to calculate final balances. Meanwhile, Ethereum is account based and state is global, and to determine the balances you only need to check the merkl…

You say “check merkle proof”, how do you know what it’s supposed to be? Trust somebody gives you the right hash?

There is no difference between BTC’s UTXO model and Ethereum’s account model in this sense - both are aggregate structures and to have full certainty the aggregate you’re looking at is correct you have to run through all the transactions.

To speedup sync in BTC it is assumed that blocks older than some amount of YEARS are valid but you still have to go through their transactions to build up the aggregate UTXO set.

In ETH instead it is common to just download the result and trust it’s valid. And since it’s now impossible to sync from origin you can never tell if some account doesn’t have ether created from nothing.

Re: Why I’m so “against” Ethereum

#139

Post by keymone »

erulabs wrote: post #89
xiphias2 wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You did a fast sync, not a real full sync (which verifies the transactions since the genesys block).

Right, but re-verifying every txn (a "full sync") isn't exactly the topic. You do not need to re-verify every txn to run an Ethereum node, which is what the article suggests is extremely difficult. And that's not a "light" node, it's a full node, you're just trusting the network initially (additional "trust" is "built" as transactions are processed by the node, which is the beauty of the merkle tree structure). It ce…

> you're just trusting the network initially

Yeah, let’s “just” trust random strangers’ computers to tell us the state of financial system. What could possibly go wrong.

If you don’t understand importance of “don’t trust, verify” than you shouldn’t have anything to do with cryptocurrencies (or cryptography for that matter).

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