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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

#401

Post by pinoli »

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…

mmh doesn’t make a lot of sense. Miners do actually provide the infrastructure for the network to function properly: no miners, no coins, no blocks, no transactions, no network.

I know it’s tempting to discard miners’ concerns, but it would be a great mistake. Miners need incentives, without incentives we’ll start allocating capital and resources somewhere else.

We are not greedy, not crazy, not confrontational: we are just rational.

If someone don’t like us, then could do without us.

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

#402

Post by jkhdigital »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #318
gorgoiler wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is hard to mine and hard to find. If you make a fresh piece of gold and show it to the world, you are proving that you have done some known — or at least bounded — amount of work. In gold’s case, that work is gas, electricity, and human labor. If someone shows up with gold that cost less to produce, the price goes down.

> If you make a fresh piece of gold and show it to the world, you are proving that you have done some known — or at least bounded — amount of work Making origami pirate ships also requires a certain amount of work. That doesn’t give it value.

Value density is the differentiator. The amount of work required to produce a single ounce of gold is many orders of magnitude greater than the ancillary costs of storing or transporting that ounce.

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

#403

Post by pinoli »

xorcist wrote: post #287
malikNF wrote: post #250

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> Miners don’t dictate protocol rules. Miners do one job - hash blocks. And they get rewarded for it. What? Not really. Miners do indeed dictate the protocol rules, its is the miners agreeing to following a certain version of the consensus algorithm that makes a blockchain do what it does. So they are partly responsible for more than just mining blocks. Like I said initially it is hard to say who the actual decision…

> its is the miners agreeing to following a certain version of the consensus algorithm that makes a blockchain do what it does You have cause and effect mixed up. The miners that follow the same consensus rules that the merchants and exchanges do, get paid. The others do not. A majority of miners following incompatible consensus would look like a huge drop off in mining capacity from the end users perspective. Simila…

merchants and exchanges do not exist in blockchain terms, miners come first since they literally make the chain run. Everything flows from here.

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

#404

Post by pinoli »

nootropicat wrote: post #267
malikNF wrote: post #218

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Tbh, I don't get your analogy, why should the miners be looked at as bodyguards? While I agree the miners are responsible for protecting the network, I don't think you can draw a distinction that easily between an eth holder vs a miner, because anyone can become a miner and anyone can become a holder and an entity can be both a miner and a holder. Everyone who participates in the eth network should have the power to…

Miners aren't stakeholders, they are hired to do one job and have no right to get any input. They're already coddled in ethereum. Everyone who actually is a stakeholder wants PoS. Ultimately eth buyers decide everything, as all money flows from them. Miners just mine what's profitable at the moment.

sorry but no one is hired. Mining is voluntary and based on incentives: you remove the incentives, miners stop mining.

it’s that simple.

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

#405

Post by jkhdigital »

DennisP wrote: post #385
chizhik-pyzhik wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is a problem. That's a big reason for moving from proof-of-work to proof-of-stake- to more directly make the _holders_ of Ethereum in charge of the chain. It's a difficult thing to do, though. Hashpower based mining is easier to get going. Proof of stake has issues like the nothing-at-stake problem, where theoretically you could stake-mine on multiple chains: https://ethereum.stackexchange.com/questions/2402/what-…

Nothing-at-stake is a solved problem in Ethereum's PoS. The basic idea is that stakers' deposits act as security bonds. If a staker commits to two conflicting chains, any other staker can see that they did so, and get rewarded for publishing a proof of that. Then the cheating staker gets their stake destroyed on both chains.

There is a deeper problem with PoS, which is about where the value of the staked token comes from in the first place. PoW ties this to the burning of real-world value, specifically electricity which is about as close to distilled economic value as you can get. Ethereum is trying to bootstrap value with PoW and then switch, but I have strong doubts that this is a sustainable solution.

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

#406

Post by jki275 »

ryanlol wrote: post #374
jki275 wrote: post #366

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What are you talking about? The fork that left ETC as the original chain was a rollback of the chain that destroyed the concept of its immutability for the purpose of fixing a massive financial mistake. There were no other chains left as a result of such a fork. It is a fork, and ETC is the original chain. Those are facts.

ETC is not the original chain as the homestead hardfork predates it.

Which chain was left as the result of that fork? If the earlier chain is abandoned, then the new chain by default becomes the valid chain.

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

#407

Post by Aeolun »

ur-whale wrote: post #261
Aeolun wrote: post #201

Every time I read about anything related to cryptocurrency it reads like a high-school opera. With several orders of magnitude more money involved. I really don’t like this whole industry, and I cannot see how anyone would. It’s like a cult.

> I really don’t like this whole industry Yet, you're here, reading the article and commenting.

Well, I like HN, and I keep hoping that this time, things will be different.

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

#408

Post by psychiatrist24 »

dylkil wrote: post #364
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #354

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> the difficulty bomb will kill off eth1 Wouldn’t it make sense for miners to switch to a new Ethereum chain without the bomb?

Then they will be on a fork of a fork of a fork (ETC -> ETH -> ETH_POW -> ETH_POW minus Difficulty bomb) who will take this chain seriously

How would they be on a fork, if the "original" dies because of the difficulty bomb? Since the fork that wasn't bombed would survive, it would be considered the original, wouldn't it?

How is it defined? Like somebody releases a new version with the bomb removed. Most miners adapt it. Why is it then a fork? Because the bomb is a major feature? Otherwise, wouldn't ever software upgrade be considered a fork?

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

#409

Post by gus_massa »

dylkil wrote: post #364
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #354

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> the difficulty bomb will kill off eth1 Wouldn’t it make sense for miners to switch to a new Ethereum chain without the bomb?

Then they will be on a fork of a fork of a fork (ETC -> ETH -> ETH_POW -> ETH_POW minus Difficulty bomb) who will take this chain seriously

The Difficulty Bomb has been delayed at least once, so delaying it once again or defusing it, it not unimaginable.

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

#410

Post by shawnz »

jkhdigital wrote: post #398
shawnz wrote: post #346

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If the current group of Ethereum miners decide to stop mining, why wouldn't new parties come in to take the profits they are leaving behind?

It’s not like there’s a giant pool of mining hardware waiting in the wings to take over... I think we can assume that all hardware is always in use mining something as long as marginal revenue exceeds marginal cost.

Ethereum is typically mined on GPUs so I would argue there really is a giant pool of hardware waiting to take over. On Bitcoin where ASIC mining is common that is indeed a concern, but consider even then, each hardware owner has stronger incentives to just lie about participating in such a strike while keeping the increased profits for themselves.
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