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Ethereum 2.0 launches

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Re: Ethereum 2.0 launches

#271

Post by DennisP »

flixic wrote: post #260
nootropicat wrote: post #253

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 l…

There's actually research out of Princeton, that says blockchains destabilize if the rewards are dominated by fees.

https://www.cs.princeton.edu/~arvindn/publications/mining_CC...

Re: Ethereum 2.0 launches

#272

Post by jules-jules »

T0Bi wrote: post #233
jules-jules wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In the longer term, yes. Plus you can use eth2 in defi (e.g., for lending) to generate additional yield.

No you can't. You can't do anything with Eth2 that is locked. Some pool staking services offer a token for each ETH staked, but you can not use the staked ETH.

I was referring to longer term developments, in case this is unclear.

Using staked ether in the defi ecosystem will be possible once withdrawal and smart contract functionality is enabled. Until then, there are liquid staking services that offer eth2 derivatives that can be used in defi, as you point out.

Re: Ethereum 2.0 launches

#273

Post by rjknight »

louwrentius wrote: post #197
rjknight wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a bit like saying that nobody needs a Linux desktop because Windows is good enough. Some people just care more than you do about certain principles, even if caring about those principles means that they have to endure a lower "quality" product. Most blockchains are strictly inferior to a modern financial system when it comes to things like speed and cost of transferring small sums of money - which is the use…

I don't understand why this topic is in any way relatable to the Linux vs. Windows discussion, even as an analogy. > But, if you are running Wikileaks, blockchain payments are superior because the credit card companies can't decide to stop processing your payments. That's not a good example to justify any of this, in my opinion. > But there are situations in which it is difficult to get multiple parties to agree on a…

> That's not a good example to justify any of this, in my opinion.

It's a real example from recent history, where technology A was able to solve a problem that technology B could not. This should affect one's belief in the merits of technology A.

> Such as?

During the recent US election, Facebook has struggled to present itself as a neutral broker of information. There were occasions in which it appears that Facebook charged higher or lower rates to different parties for political advertisements. All of the major social media companies are now facing politically-motivated attacks, where political actors are attempting to undermine confidence in the neutrality and efficacy of moderation, ad allocation, and recommendation algorithms. There is a plausible argument that open, verifiable computing networks could be a useful tool in dealing with such situations.

I put the emphasis on plausible because the standard for plausibility is not especially high. There are plenty of other solutions to this problem. I personally think that this is sufficient to make Ethereum interesting.

> I think that's just false equivalence.

What is false about it? My statement about how Linux was perceived in the early-mid-90s is definitely true. The key difference between Linux and its competitors was that it was an open system that could not be controlled by a single private actor, which was a serious concern given Microsoft's dominance of the OS market (which led to their antitrust trial). Ethereum has broadly similar positioning as a provider of computing services, whose only competitive advantage is that it cannot be controlled by a single private actor.

Re: Ethereum 2.0 launches

#274

Post by Acrobatic_Road »

pmachinery wrote: post #254
joeblau wrote: post #206

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

It depends.

* you can mine your own transaction if you have the ability

* you can use a layer 2 state channel network like lightening (bitcoin/litecoin) or raiden (ethereum) to exchange value without a miner.

* if you are worried about fees, there are networks like EOS which don't have have them.

* there is at least 1 ethereum wallet that will pay your fees for you.

* if you use monero, the miner can't distinguish your transaction from anyone else's, so there's little to worry about with regard to selective censorship.

* if a bitcoin/ethereum miner does censor you, it doesn't mean your transaction doesn't get processed because there are other miners.

Hope this info is helpful.

Re: Ethereum 2.0 launches

#275

Post by kemonocode »

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…

My issue with these kind of questions is that they're hardly ever done in good faith, and they show over and over again whenever crypto is brought up on HN.

Crypto has its good uses, and I've relied on it for my livelihood before (and even wished it wasn't just used as a speculation vehicle) when traditional banking couldn't meet my needs, so it's a very Americentric/Eurocentric thing to assume it's only ever good to speculate on and buy drugs on the Dark Web.

That's it- that's its killer app, it's an alternative to existing money transfer and store of value mechanisms, anything else like "smart contracts" or reduced carbon footprints from better Proof-of-Stake implementations are a nice bonus and worth developing, of course.

Re: Ethereum 2.0 launches

#276

Post by dmihal »

ArtWomb wrote: post #29

Whoa, according to AllNodes, Expected ROI for Eth2 stakeholders is 16.6%, which easily beats out almost any other DeFi interest bearing account (typically ~10%)!

yEarn is offering ~17% APR on stablecoins, but of course the risk profile is vastly different.

Re: Ethereum 2.0 launches

#277

Post by Acrobatic_Road »

benwad wrote: post #227
nootropicat wrote: post #198

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>What does this do for real-life applications? You can lend dollars on ethereum for 4% APR at the moment. That's a good reason to use this even for someone not interested in other functions. The interest comes from borrowers, who are mostly speculators going long on crypto. https://compound.finance/markets USDC is tokenized dollar that can be swapped to/from dollars in a bank account on coinbase. Recently it was even…

What happens with these loans if the recipient defaults on repayment?

As another commented pointed out, the collateral is seized. Default risk is very low because there is more collateral than debt.

There's also special loans with 0% collateralization which amazingly have even less risk than the type described above. Those are called flash loans and take advantage of ethereum behavior that allows mini-rollbacks in the time before a block is finalized. So you borrow millions of dollars in the span of about ten seconds, and if it doesn't get payed back then it gets reverted. Very powerful if you're smart enough to use it properly.

Re: Ethereum 2.0 launches

#278

Post by KSteffensen »

gnarcoregrizz wrote: post #257
KSteffensen wrote: post #214

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 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…

> No KYC

I don't know what KYC is but I'm not US based. Sounds like some fee that's peculiar to US banking environment (which I have heard is extraordinarily bureaucratic).

>Instantly liquid programmable assets

Another example of opaque blockchain jargon. Maybe it makes sense, but not as a way to convert the sceptical.

>Programmable banking

I can currently program transfers to happen regularly every month on a certain date, or every tuesday or on soem other timebased trigger. This pretty much covers my personal needs. Everything else I want to double check before approving. I program for a living. Looking around at my family, I don't see anyone capable of writing a simple Python program in order to e.g. pay a bill and my wife has a PhD.

> Financial censorship resistant

Is this a feature? Don't we as a society want a way to control e.g. drug lords and tax evaders moving their money around?

I have never tried buying penny stocks or any type of stock, but is it really such a big deal that you have to wait a day or week before you can place your bets? And that your bets are limited to the roulette and not the blackjack?

Re: Ethereum 2.0 launches

#279

Post by dmihal »

shireboy wrote: post #3

Can someone ELI5 for current ETH holders? Will it split like Etherium Classic?

Short answer: no, there's only one Ethereum and one ETH asset

Long answer: The beacon chain _will_ run in parallel until the two chains are merged. Until that time, ETH in the Beacon Chain isn't transferable, so effectively not a separate asset.

However, exchanges are offering Eth2 staking derivatives which they're branding as "ETH2". But it should be remembered that this is a derivative, not a separate M0 asset.

Re: Ethereum 2.0 launches

#280

Post by dev_throw »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #237
parksy wrote: post #195

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> When people claim Ethereum is turing complete, it means that anyone can launch a program into it, and the "swarm" runs the program. (...) Ethereum has baked in protocols so that the distributed result of millions of nodes running a program reaches a stasticial consensus. Usually the reason to run something on more than one computing unit is to achieve additive gains - like getting results faster, or processing more…

This is to achieve consensus - the N nodes running the smart contract will ideally replace the central authorities that we implicitly trust.

This enables trustless transactions, which gets rid of a lot of business red tape and unlocks productivity.

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