Ethereum 2.0 launches • Hacker News Board

Re: Ethereum 2.0 launches

#161

Post by louwrentius » Tue, Dec 01, 2020, 2:35 PM UTC

seibelj wrote: post #153

louwrentius wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> In the case of Ethereum, digital scarcity secured by a blockchain enables a turing complete state machine that the world can use. Does this sentence actually mean anything? > In the most basic terms, this will remove clearing houses for transactions of assets. In the long term this will lead to novel types of assets, and make ownership extremely liquid. What does this mean in concrete terms? > Imagine using your ph…

You just keep acting like the “caveman lawyer” from Saturday Night Live and refusing to learn or acknowledge anything. You are being obnoxious and just continuing the HN trope of “blockchain is totally worthless despite it being worth hundreds of billions - the whole world is wrong not me!”

An ad-hominem, thank you.

Do you know anything about human psychology, by the way?

Re: Ethereum 2.0 launches

#162

Post by dewarrn1 » Tue, Dec 01, 2020, 2:35 PM UTC

markkat wrote: post #125

louwrentius wrote: post #46

I don't understand this. I don't understand any of it. I don't understand cryptocurrencies. I don't understand what problems they really solve. > "Ethereum is open access to digital money and data-friendly services for everyone – no matter your background or location. It's a community-built technology behind the cryptocurrency ether (ETH) and thousands of applications you can use today." I can do all these things alr…

It makes me sad, because I expected a comment like this to be the highest on HN. In the case of Ethereum, digital scarcity secured by a blockchain enables a turing complete state machine that the world can use. In the most basic terms, this will remove clearing houses for transactions of assets. In the long term this will lead to novel types of assets, and make ownership extremely liquid. Imagine using your phone to…

Imagined.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Unincorporated_Man

Re: Ethereum 2.0 launches

#163

Post by fisf » Tue, Dec 01, 2020, 2:35 PM UTC

antihero wrote: post #93

kolinko wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is powered by proof of stake, which means no asic miners, and possibly quicker blocks. A new virtual machine for smart contracts (EWASM instead of EVM) giving better contract analysis options, and possibly higher sync speeds due to optimisations. Also, sharding - so multiple jndependent blockchains, that should fix the scalability. If I’m not mistaken, this release is not yet a full blown new chain, but just a par…

Is EWASM basically just webassembly running on Ethereum?

Basically the deterministic subset of web assembly.

Re: Ethereum 2.0 launches

#164

Post by nootropicat » Tue, Dec 01, 2020, 2:36 PM UTC

noneeeed wrote: post #6

Can anyone give a TLDR of what is significant about Ethereum 2.0 for those of us who don't follow this stuff much? As blockchain tech goes, Ethereum always seemed the most interesting.

Multiple aspects. PoS offers much, much stronger security than PoW while being about 4000x cheaper to run and sustainably decentralized. Sharding (along with rollups) allows for a truly global scale platform - over 100k TPS, potentially 1M, while still running on normal computers in people's homes. PoS is a requirement for sharding, as dividing security under PoW would make each shard too easy to attack.

Last but not least, full eth2 turns eth into a positive yield asset, a share in ethereum (real income depends on fees paid by users - ethereum already dominates).

https://cryptofees.info/

To not overhype, the current launch is really an incentivized testnet only for PoS itself - real ethereum still runs on PoW as it was. It's important because it shows that after long delays eth2 is finally starting to happen, and because consensus itself is like a car that can drive without transporting anything or anyone - not very useful at the moment, but changes required to make it useful are relatively small compared to building the car from the ground up.

Re: Ethereum 2.0 launches

#165

Post by louwrentius » Tue, Dec 01, 2020, 2:36 PM UTC

pavlov wrote: post #154

louwrentius wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> In the case of Ethereum, digital scarcity secured by a blockchain enables a turing complete state machine that the world can use. Does this sentence actually mean anything? > In the most basic terms, this will remove clearing houses for transactions of assets. In the long term this will lead to novel types of assets, and make ownership extremely liquid. What does this mean in concrete terms? > Imagine using your ph…

> ”Does this sentence actually mean anything?” In more traditional software engineering language, it means “you can run stored procedures on an incredibly slow and limited distributed database.” Also those stored procedures are immutable, written in a language with more holes than Swiss cheese, and you have to use a scammy cryptocurrency to pay for the privilege of running these unsafe programs. The adherents call th…

Hmm, this reads like something I do understand, thank you.

Re: Ethereum 2.0 launches

#166

Post by WnZ39p0Dgydaz1 » Tue, Dec 01, 2020, 2:37 PM UTC

louwrentius wrote: post #149

joeblau wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can do all these things already. You're absolutely right, but just like you can send a letter in the mail, email does the same thing but is digitally native to the internet. Up until the invention of Bitcoin, there was ZERO scalable way for me @joeblau to send you @louwrentius money the way I send an email. By that, I mean the only thing I need to rely on is a protocol (like SMTP) and you'll receive it. What proble…

> Up until the invention of Bitcoin, there was ZERO scalable way for me @joeblau to send you @louwrentius money the way I send an email. By that, I mean the only thing I need to rely on is a protocol (like SMTP) and you'll receive it. Maybe because it's not a need most people have? > The problem is that money (paper money/currency) is not the only thing that has value which human beings transfer among each other. We…

It's fine to criticize a technology and saying that you don't understand what problem it solves, but responding to every comment, even those that make clearly valid points, with "means nothing to me" and "not a problem for me" without any counterarguments is quite rude. These people are taking the time to answer your questions.

For example, intermediaries such as brokerages and banks taking money from your investments and selling your data (and order flow in the case of trading) is clearly inefficient and unnecessary, even if you don't care about it personally.

Re: Ethereum 2.0 launches

#167

Post by xur17 » Tue, Dec 01, 2020, 2:37 PM UTC

louwrentius wrote: post #156

deif wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's fine, you don't have to use it. A lot of people do prefer to use it for payments and receive payments in it though. They don't want a middle-man bank and would rather their transactions were trustlessly sent and received. At it's core cryptocurrency is a way to bypass banks if one was so inclined. Specifically currencies like Monero allow a person to send and receive payments completely anonymously, hence its…

That's a nice argument against cryptocurrencies. They enable darkweb sites like Silk Road and it's successors.

So does physical cash. Perhaps we should outlaw it.

Re: Ethereum 2.0 launches

#168

Post by DennisP » Tue, Dec 01, 2020, 2:38 PM UTC

ur-whale wrote: post #40

tormeh wrote: post #31

Is it still deflationary? Wondering if I should invest in the coin itself (which makes sense for deflationary coins) or a company doing something with it (which makes sense for an inflationary coin)

ETH was never deflationary. As a matter of fact, knowing how many ETH will be produced over a given period of time is a question I never managed to get a satisfactory answer to. There's probably an algorithm buried somewhere in the code, but it's likely not a simple one.

On PoW, it's currently 2 ETH per block, with a little bit extra for occasional "uncle blocks." This is fixed but has been reduced a couple times by hard forks.

For PoS, issuance is a formula depending on the amount staked. How that works out: https://docs.ethhub.io/ethereum-roadmap/ethereum-2.0/eth-2.0...

If you want to dig into the actual formula, it's explained here: https://benjaminion.xyz/eth2-annotated-spec/phase0/beacon-ch...

Until PoW migrates to PoS, probably in about a year, they'll operate in parallel and we'll have both rewards added together.

A final factor is an upcoming change to the way transaction fees work, which will burn most of the fees instead of awarding them to validators. That will reduce net issuance further, possibly even taking it negative.

Re: Ethereum 2.0 launches

#169

Post by UShouldBWorking » Tue, Dec 01, 2020, 2:38 PM UTC

seibelj wrote: post #153

louwrentius wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> In the case of Ethereum, digital scarcity secured by a blockchain enables a turing complete state machine that the world can use. Does this sentence actually mean anything? > In the most basic terms, this will remove clearing houses for transactions of assets. In the long term this will lead to novel types of assets, and make ownership extremely liquid. What does this mean in concrete terms? > Imagine using your ph…

You just keep acting like the “caveman lawyer” from Saturday Night Live and refusing to learn or acknowledge anything. You are being obnoxious and just continuing the HN trope of “blockchain is totally worthless despite it being worth hundreds of billions - the whole world is wrong not me!”

Very well put. It's hard to not feel conspiratorial seeing this level of ignorance here.

Blockchain solves the problem of transferring value without an intemediary, what's so hard to understand for these people?

Re: Ethereum 2.0 launches

#170

Post by hypertele-Xii » Tue, Dec 01, 2020, 2:38 PM UTC

faitswulff wrote: post #90

SCHiM wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In simple terms. The currencies, and related technologies al deal with the problem of transferring of money/services between parties where no centralized trust/power exists. This is, in the words of their proponents to prevent abuse by the trusted party: Credit card companies blocking transfers to legitimate companies on the basis of pressure from the US gov. Banks printing money and devaluing currency of currency ho…

It seems like the benefit of not having to trust world governments or their currencies isn't that compelling for most people, who I presume almost universally already participate in said social contracts.

I certainly trust world governments more than some random Internet community. Who's to say the whole thing isn't a scam? Has this tech been independently audited?