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Ethereum 2.0 launches

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Re: Ethereum 2.0 launches

#251

Post by zadler »

eric_cc wrote: post #230
konschubert wrote: post #190

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Eventually Proof of Work WILL kill Bitcoin - but I have to admit this may be decades out in the future. Right now, most of the mining is financed via inflation. But as this comes to an end, eventually, the cost of mining will be borne by anyone making transactions on the network through tx fees. Somebody has to pay the electricity bill on all these ASICs. EDIT: One could try to argue that high transaction costs are n…

I just don't see it. Bitcoin could be forked to no longer use PoW if it became an existential threat.

Bitcoin will continue to use PoW while the main chain transaction fees are enough to buy adequate security for the network. This could be a very long time, or indefinite if it continues on it’s current trajectory. And if it does, then some governments will almost certainly take an interest in mining as a way to generate revenue from available energy, as Venezuela is already doing.

Re: Ethereum 2.0 launches

#252

Post by zadler »

dirtnugget wrote: post #112
awelkie wrote: post #35

Can someone explain how block timing works in proof-of-stake systems? As I understand it, with proof-of-work the mining difficulty increases or decreases to maintain that each block is found in roughly the same amount of time. In proof-of-stake is there also a mechanism to regulate the time for each block to be added to the blockchain?

No, as far as I understood the time between blocks in a PoS chain is basically just a timer (e.g. 10 seconds). There is no need to adjust that dynamically because there is no "race" to solve a problem. I guess it is even more predictable if it is not dynamically adjusted.

But that does have to be enforced via incentives/cryptography, and with reference to a clock.

Re: Ethereum 2.0 launches

#253

Post by nootropicat »

konschubert wrote: post #190
lekevicius wrote: post #39

I am incredibly happy about this. It's the first step for a major cryptocurrency towards ledger security that does not damage the environment via mining. I always hated how wasteful and energy-inefficient mining is. Staking reduces energy costs by many, many orders of magnitude. With lightweight clients in development, it is possible to validate chain using Raspberry Pi. I hope (but don't expect) that some time in th…

Eventually Proof of Work WILL kill Bitcoin - but I have to admit this may be decades out in the future. Right now, most of the mining is financed via inflation. But as this comes to an end, eventually, the cost of mining will be borne by anyone making transactions on the network through tx fees. Somebody has to pay the electricity bill on all these ASICs. EDIT: One could try to argue that high transaction costs are n…

Define 'kill'. ETC has been 51% attacked multiple times and it still exists. It's very possible some people are going to mine btc on their personal hardware even in 2100. The only caveat is the difficulty adjustment algorithm, as it's potentially possible for btc to become stuck at an extremely high difficulty.

For 'kill' as in 'stops being big and important' I think it's going to happen relatively soon, mostly agreeing with your article. Bitcoin already lost its past domination in users and total fees paid to ethereum, the only missing part is for eth to actually monetize that by fully switching from PoW to PoS. When eth stakers start making even billions annually while btc buyers lose billions annually to mining, btc losing its first place is only a matter of time. After that, PoW is going to be widely discredited and viewed as obsolete.

Re: Ethereum 2.0 launches

#254

Post by pmachinery »

joeblau wrote: post #206
pmachinery wrote: post #182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why am I paying fees if there's no middle-person?

The fees are a business decision, not a technical requirement.

1. Middle-people are a technical requirement. That's the point.

2. What happens if I send BTC without paying the middle-people a fee?

If the recipient doesn't typically receive it in seconds (and there's a public log of every sent and received 'message') let's stop making stuff up like bitcoin makes sending money like sending an email.

Re: Ethereum 2.0 launches

#255

Post by a-nikolaev »

parksy wrote: post #195
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…

Turing completeness in layman's terms means you can write programs on it. Traditionally a computer that most people are familiar with is a single machine, like PC or the device we can hold in our hands. Etherium is a swarm of millions of computers that anyone can add to the swarm. When people claim Ethereum is turing complete, it means that anyone can launch a program into it, and the "swarm" runs the program. But wh…

Can you provide an example where a smart contract needs unbounded loops or unbounded recursion? Do you really need Turing completeness to begin with?

Re: Ethereum 2.0 launches

#256

Post by louwrentius »

RinTohsaka wrote: post #192
louwrentius wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Yeah, but so does cash in the physical world. We shouldn't abolish cash tho. Just because something can be used for "bad" doesn't mean it shouldn't exist. The internet also could be considered an enabler for sites like Silk Road, but its not gona get shut down for that reason. So... the follow up question is, "Are there any good use cases?" Yes, the biggest that comes to mind is it allows people who may be doing noth…

> Yeah, but so does cash in the physical world. We shouldn't abolish cash tho.

Cash I understand, it has benefits. Crypto doesn't, it only seems to have drawbacks and facilitate crime.

Re: Ethereum 2.0 launches

#257

Post by gnarcoregrizz »

KSteffensen wrote: post #214
markkat wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> In the case of Ethereum, digital scarcity secured by a blockchain enables a turing complete state machine that the world can use This sentence is completely opaque to me. I have no idea what you are trying to say. > In the most basic terms, this will remove clearing houses for transactions of asset So I will be able to go to Starbucks, buy a cup of coffee, pay for it with Ethereum and not involve my bank? > Imagine…

No KYC

Offline account creation

Instantly liquid programmable assets

Programmable banking

Financial censorship resistant

Micro finance

Anyone can use it, it’s surprisingly simple

You could create your own company+shares if you want and they can be instantly available on any market. Ever tried trading a penny stock, or an international stock? It takes forever to open an account at a brokerage where they may or may not allow you to trade certain types of assets, or at certain times. Trades can be reversed and assets confiscated. It’s a million times easier with crypto. Yes it’s a “dark forest” for now (buyer beware) but there are some legitimate platforms like aave and uniswap. Install metamask and check it out! Feels incredibly futuristic to me

Re: Ethereum 2.0 launches

#258

Post by DennisP »

ur-whale wrote: post #242
DennisP wrote: post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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/phas…

The point I was trying to make - apologies for not making it clearer - is that from the point of view of the ETH{insert favorite fiat currency here} market figuring out what the how the supply will behave is hard, and therefore hard to price.

Maybe, but I didn't have that formula handy and found it with a couple minutes of googling, so it's not that hard.

In any case, by the time the full transition to PoS is complete, one thing that will be easy for the market to know is that issuance will be substantially lower than BTC, and possibly negative depending on transaction fees.

Re: Ethereum 2.0 launches

#259

Post by joosters »

The_Colonel wrote: post #240
pavlov wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> ”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…

> Also those stored procedures are immutable, written in a language with more holes than Swiss cheese... You're probably referencing this fuck up: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_DAO_(organization) The huge advantage of smart contracts is that they are supposed to be trustless - you don't need to necessarily trust your business partners because contract is set in stone ... code and will be executed exactly as agree…

You don't have to go back that far in time, 'hacks' and bugs in 'smart' contracts happen almost every day. Here's a recent $7M loss: https://cointelegraph.com/news/yield-generating-stablecoin-p... and here's a $89M loss less than a week ago: https://decrypt.co/49657/oracle-exploit-sees-100-million-liq...

It's not even the first time that the 'Compound' smart contract has been 'hacked', but that doesn't stop fools from putting more money into it again.

All these fuck ups are called 'hacks', but actually the code is working exactly as intended, it's just that there are so many ways to write smart contracts incorrectly that it's more than likely they all have hidden bugs, just waiting to be exploited.

Re: Ethereum 2.0 launches

#260

Post by flixic »

nootropicat wrote: post #253
konschubert wrote: post #190

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Eventually Proof of Work WILL kill Bitcoin - but I have to admit this may be decades out in the future. Right now, most of the mining is financed via inflation. But as this comes to an end, eventually, the cost of mining will be borne by anyone making transactions on the network through tx fees. Somebody has to pay the electricity bill on all these ASICs. EDIT: One could try to argue that high transaction costs are n…

Define 'kill'. ETC has been 51% attacked multiple times and it still exists. It's very possible some people are going to mine btc on their personal hardware even in 2100. The only caveat is the difficulty adjustment algorithm, as it's potentially possible for btc to become stuck at an extremely high difficulty. For 'kill' as in 'stops being big and important' I think it's going to happen relatively soon, mostly agree…

Everything I know about cryptocurrencies makes me think you and parent are completely right, and PoW cannot work without inflation (or even with very low inflation, that does not justify the cost of running hardware in the absence of transactions). Just relying on transaction fees should lead to downward spiral of use, where fees are way too high to maintain use, or network security is too low to protect value.

I'd like to hear from Bitcoin proponents where we are wrong in our thinking. What assumptions are incorrect? Is there a flaw in economic reasoning? If not, what is being done with Bitcoin to address this existential risk for Bitcoin?

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