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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

#421

Post by Zetaphor »

psychiatrist24 wrote: post #408
dylkil wrote: post #364

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

If I understood the conversation from the last dev call correctly, they're talking about combining EIP-1559 and the difficulty bomb fix into the same fork specifically to avoid this

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

#422

Post by kerng »

6nf wrote: post #286
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…

Question: Will there be a chain split - will we end up with 'ETH classic' and 'ETH proof of stake' after the upgrade or how does it work?

If I understand right the ETH chain will be integrated as a shard. This would mean it would just live on inside the new Ethereum ecosystem until it is ice aged - so one could say it's not a fork but a wrap of some sort.

Unfortunately not a single resource I found actually describes this process in an easy to understand fashion - pretty amazing considering we are talking about $200+ billion dollars....

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

#423

Post by michaelsbradley »

pinoli wrote: post #401
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…

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 a…

As of 01 Dec 2020, there is already another Ethereum mainnet chain (Eth2 Phase 0) running in parallel with and dependent upon the Eth1 mainnet chain:

https://beaconcha.in/

https://beaconscan.com/

https://github.com/ethereum/eth2.0-specs/tree/dev/specs/phas...

Vitalik is proposing a role reversal to take place earlier than it was previously planned (not completely accurate in a technical sense re: previous plans, but effectively the same):

Eth1 mainnet will hand-off consensus responsibility to Eth2 mainnet (PoW -> PoS), while Eth1 nodes continue to "run the code" that executes smart contracts / processes transactions.

If the plan is put into motion, and as long as some miners / mining pools don't yank the plug on their mining nodes in the canonical Eth1 mainnet, then the canonical mainnet — per consensus among the Ethereum Foundation and aligned developers, Eth2 validator operators, orgs/companies/exchanges/etc — will transition suddenly from Eth1 (PoW) to Eth2 (PoS). And that will be the end of all mining on the canonical Ethereum mainnet.

Miners/pools who find it impractical or undesirable to reallocate resources from mining to staking may band together to continue running an alternate mainnet chain based on PoW (ETW?); market forces would then decide whether that chain is viable, as well deciding the fate of the evolved (PoS) Ethereum mainnet chain.

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

#424

Post by Zetaphor »

proto-n wrote: post #281
3np wrote: post #209

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you think the headline is correct in labeling this as a 51% attack? The other argument would be that developers are trying to push through a contentious fork (mostly but not only contested by miners and mining pools), and mining nodes are planning to not adopt the proposed change?

Afaik there's no plan to attack, they are planning a "show of force", i.e. get more then 51% in a pool for a while without doing anything with the power. This is separate from either adapting or not adapting the fork itself and happens before the fork. The original chain has to be forked either way, with or without eip 1559 because the "ice age" coded into the current version (it's in there for this exact reason). So…

"We're not going to 51% attack the network. We're just going to allocate 51% of the hashrate into a single pool to demonstrate that we could 51% attack the network"

Why should this threat of violence be treated differently than the act itself? Miners are threatening to do the one thing their entire existence is supposed to prevent. They're cutting off their noses to spite their faces, instead of enjoying another year or so of profitability

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

#425

Post by __tmk__ »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #354
ThePowerOfDirge wrote: post #347

Earlier quoted context omitted.

False, the difficulty bomb will kill off eth1.

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

Yes, miners can turn off the bomb, but that requires that they coordinate and determine a schedule for the hardfork that turns off the bomb (you need a hardfork to turn it off).

This scenario is definitely possible, but it requires a little more work than "one guy keeps running an old eth1 node".

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

#426

Post by CameronNemo »

_7fvc wrote: post #237
CameronNemo wrote: post #226

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why can't they replace fiat? Why can't crypto be minted to represent real world assets (like batches of nuts or nickel, not magic pieces of paper)?

Because real world assets don't get minted like crypto. They are tied to physical world. They are volatile. Bitcoin produces a block every 10 minutes. It's a fairly precise schedule. On the other hand, real world assets grow and contract at unpredictable rates. Even gold mining fluctuates. The real world is volatile. The BTCUSD peg is free floating. It's also volatile. Crypto is rigid. Real world is volatile. It's ha…

I'm not saying it will be an exact peg. I am saying that colored coins can represent specific batches of a real world asset. For example gold mined from a specific mine by a specific company from date x to date y. That company would also create the colored coins that represent a claim to the gold mined. They could even mint the coins ahead of time and they would act as futures on the output of the mine during that time.

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

#427

Post by olouv »

jki275 wrote: post #96
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.

Precisely. Vitalik wants to fork ETH (as he's done before when they rolled back the DAO hack) to make a new version of ETH that is proof of stake. The miners, as I've predicted here before, disagree, because this fork obliterates their entire business model. Shocking.

ETH2 is the ETH main roadmap, not a fork.

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

#429

Post by gus_massa »

throwaway4good wrote: post #365
6nf wrote: post #286

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Question: Will there be a chain split - will we end up with 'ETH classic' and 'ETH proof of stake' after the upgrade or how does it work?

Vitalik and friends can just sell their coins on the proof of work chain and thus make it unattractive.

Do they have enough ETH to run a 51% attack with a PoS system?

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

#430

Post by samvher »

kubanczyk wrote: post #368
samvher wrote: post #222

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I largely agree. I think the field is exciting and interesting, and like many crypto fanatics say, there might be parallels with the early days of the internet. I think part of the reason it takes time for people to see the potential is that a lot of it just isn't ready for mainstream yet. The tooling is not uniform and easy, PoW really does not seem like the way to go, and scalability is largely missing. It seems ma…

The existing banking system? Goliath was better than David at fighting and he was not keen to learn rock-slinging. (I'm not implying David will always win though. It's unlikely.)

Plenty of central banks seem interested in launching digital currencies. For me the main selling points of cryptocurrencies are programmability, easy international transactions, and potentially easy micro-transactions. Personally I don't care much about the fact that they are decentralized, and while I'm happy for my bank to see my transaction history I'm not that keen on having it public.

If I could move my savings into a digital currency provided by a central bank I'd do it today. Bonus points if it can be stored in something like special drawing rights rather than euros.

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