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Vitalik escalates ETH 2.0 merge as miners plan a 51% attack

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Re: Vitalik escalates ETH 2.0 merge as miners plan a 51% attack

#181

Post by ashfame »

Taek wrote: post #155
typest wrote: post #12

I'm not an expert, but if 51% of the existing hashpower doesn't want a change, it sounds less a 51% attack and more like miners voting against something that isn't in their interest. The whole point of blockchains is that the incentives are supposed to be aligned between miners and users. If that isn't the case here, it sounds like a problem.

You should think of miners as bodyguards. They aren't intended to be active participants on the network, they are intended to provide the service of securing the network and serving the interests of the users of the network. If a group of bodyguards at a concert vote democratically and 51% of them decide the singer shouldn't be allowed to go on stage and sing (because of a grudge or whatever), is that a problem? Yes…

A decentralized network doesn't care for vision, it functions as per what its participants want. What you are describing, is a problem in centralised network, which Ethereum is. So, you are technically right, but let's not confuse the interests of the creator is same as the interests of the users of the network.

Miners are not supposed to serve anyone but themselves. Everyone for themselves. A right system economically incentivize the right action by design, like in Bitcoin. Important to understand the first principles before judging any distributed system.

Re: Vitalik escalates ETH 2.0 merge as miners plan a 51% attack

#182

Post by thekyle »

Rapzid wrote: post #123
whywhywhywhy wrote: post #67

Looking at ETH in terms of wallets interacting with dapps, NFT, uniswap, etc it all honestly feels like magic. Obviously the high gas makes it feel a lot less like magic when every button click is 30-100$ but really this all gives me so much hope for a better post-mobile app based internet. I was so cynical for a long time about where tech was heading but this gives me hope that in 10 years we might be in a better pl…

It's amazing but yeah, 40 dollars to swap tokens... You could almost imagine it all being kept track of on paper or punch cards with people manually carrying out every transaction for that price LOL. I'm looking forward to smart contracts costing pennies per transaction. It's going to be a game changer for the utility of it all.

Are the high gas fees something that proof of stake will solve?

Re: Vitalik escalates ETH 2.0 merge as miners plan a 51% attack

#183

Post by cachvico »

tcgv wrote: post #149
jaimehrubiks wrote: post #21

Regardless of the current issues with the updates, gas prices, different opinions on the community, devs vs miners vs users... Am I the only one who thinks people underestimate Ethereum and its EVM invention? In 2013 this guy (who I think is a visionary) wrote a document with a proposal that led to the creation of a world-wide turing-complete distributed computer. And still, people are just starting to realize its po…

I have been keeping up with the developments in the crypto space from the outside for the past few years. Never really invested in any currency as it always felt too risky / speculative for my taste. It wasn't until last year with the upcoming of DeFi (Decentralized Finance) that I decided to get involved somehow, instead of just watching innovation happen. I also think this really has a lot of potential. So I starte…

Impressive!

Re: Vitalik escalates ETH 2.0 merge as miners plan a 51% attack

#184

Post by warent »

ashfame wrote: post #181
Taek wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You should think of miners as bodyguards. They aren't intended to be active participants on the network, they are intended to provide the service of securing the network and serving the interests of the users of the network. If a group of bodyguards at a concert vote democratically and 51% of them decide the singer shouldn't be allowed to go on stage and sing (because of a grudge or whatever), is that a problem? Yes…

A decentralized network doesn't care for vision , it functions as per what its participants want. What you are describing, is a problem in centralised network, which Ethereum is. So, you are technically right, but let's not confuse the interests of the creator is same as the interests of the users of the network. Miners are not supposed to serve anyone but themselves. Everyone for themselves. A right system economica…

> A decentralized network doesn't care for vision

I'm not sure how this can be true as long as conditions are met:

1. original creator of decentralized network still exists

2. people still respect and give authority to creator

Bitcoin is visionless because it was theorized anonymously. Not so with Ethereum

Re: Vitalik escalates ETH 2.0 merge as miners plan a 51% attack

#185

Post by cachvico »

viraptor wrote: post #70
pgsimp wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The point of Ethereum is not really to be a distributed computer. It also seems misleading to describe it that way, as it doesn't distribute computations. Every node computes the same thing.

It also barely computes anything. It's closer to distributed consensus. (Distributed tricky consensus? - I acknowledge there's a tiny bit of logic)

It can compute anything you want it to compute.

Re: Vitalik escalates ETH 2.0 merge as miners plan a 51% attack

#186

Post by chrisco255 »

rauljordan2020 wrote: post #168

I'm one of the maintainers of one of the implementations of eth2 live today ( https://github.com/prysmaticlabs/prysm ) and can help offer more context on this. Ethereum proof of stake has been live since December 1st and it currently secures over 6 billion USD worth of value https://beaconcha.in/ . Currently, this is a chain that lives in parallel to the proof of work chain we know as Ethereum today. The idea is that…

Excellent work on prysmatic! Can you clarify about this "quick merge" proposal? Would the idea be to shift "ETH1" validation to the ETH2 Beacon nodes? At first two chains would be running and be validated by the same nodes but then much later the final merge of Beacon and ETH1 chains would occur? Is that the plan?

Re: Vitalik escalates ETH 2.0 merge as miners plan a 51% attack

#187

Post by cachvico »

from wrote: post #167
bluecalm wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wanna store value? Buy actual value - that is things that make the wealth. Stocks in major companies, real estate, land in places people want to live in. The concept that buying promises is a good way to store value is a bizarre concept to me.

This has always perplexed me too. There's a nice Buffett quote on this ( https://www.berkshirehathaway.com/letters/2011ltr.pdf ): "Today the world’s gold stock is about 170,000 metric tons. If all of this gold were melded together, it would form a cube of about 68 feet per side. (Picture it fitting comfortably within a baseball infield.) At $1,750 per ounce – gold’s price as I write this – its value would be $9.6 tri…

Fantastic post.

Re: Vitalik escalates ETH 2.0 merge as miners plan a 51% attack

#188

Post by cachvico »

rauljordan2020 wrote: post #165
shp0ngle wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

ETH, and any cryptocurrency for that matter, has never been “decentralized” in terms of development. There are always a few guys making all major decisions, and it’s hard to oppose them other than making a forked currency.

This is not true. I am one of the maintainers of https://github.com/prysmaticlabs/prysm , one of the main client implementations of eth2 today. My team is unaffiliated with the Ethereum Foundation. There are also 3 other client implementations of the protocol that are very robust and done by independent teams in different parts of the world. We also can't force users to accept all our changes, and development on ETH'…

How many people get to vote on EIPs, out of curiosity?

Re: Vitalik escalates ETH 2.0 merge as miners plan a 51% attack

#189

Post by chrisco255 »

ashfame wrote: post #181
Taek wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You should think of miners as bodyguards. They aren't intended to be active participants on the network, they are intended to provide the service of securing the network and serving the interests of the users of the network. If a group of bodyguards at a concert vote democratically and 51% of them decide the singer shouldn't be allowed to go on stage and sing (because of a grudge or whatever), is that a problem? Yes…

A decentralized network doesn't care for vision , it functions as per what its participants want. What you are describing, is a problem in centralised network, which Ethereum is. So, you are technically right, but let's not confuse the interests of the creator is same as the interests of the users of the network. Miners are not supposed to serve anyone but themselves. Everyone for themselves. A right system economica…

No it's very much decentralized as the miners are threatening a fork. This is not unlike what Bitcoin went through in 2017 when it split between BTC and BCH. If it were centralized a fork wouldn't be possible.

The miners are mercenaries. They have no loyalty to the network and the network has no loyalty to them (hence the push for proof of stake).

For what it's worth, EIP-1559 wasn't Vitalik's idea, but the change is almost universally supported by the Ethereum application developers and users.

At any rate the sooner we get off proof of work the better. Users are spending $20M a day on transaction fees. Let's put that money back into the ETH community by switching to proof of stake and burning the transaction fees.

Re: Vitalik escalates ETH 2.0 merge as miners plan a 51% attack

#190

Post by cachvico »

chizhik-pyzhik wrote: post #28
moralestapia wrote: post #6

Not trying to be snarky but Vitalik itself is ETH's 51% attack ... What's the point of decentralized cryptocurrency when it falls down on the hands of one person.

It's not really in the hands of one person, though. If the community diverges, two chains will be created, and the one will the most value will be considered the 'real' chain. This already happened once, and the less-popular chain became known as 'Ethereum Classic.' It's still around.

Less-popular and original, interestingly in this case.
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