Vitalik escalates ETH 2.0 merge as miners plan a 51% attack • Hacker News Board

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

#481

Post by norswap » Sun, Mar 14, 2021, 3:00 AM UTC

morelisp wrote: post #466

TacticalCoder wrote: post #436

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What really surprises me is how in bad faith the PoW miners are acting. Ethereum was, from day one, planning to transition to PoS once the research and proof-of-concept was working. If anything the Ethereum PoW miners have been very lucky in that Ethereum is kinda late on its roadmap to switch to PoS (at least compared to when first announced).

You're saying a significant number of people who gathered behind the maxim "code is law" for money may have signed onto what the code was doing and not what the long-term social plan was? Quelle surprise!

Well, the code never guaranteed that people would not merge the PoW chain to the PoS chain :)

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

#482

Post by jude- » Sun, Mar 14, 2021, 3:03 AM UTC

015a wrote: post #479

jude- wrote: post #397

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So I guess Ethereum is, in fact, a developer-run show.

People are free to disagree with and act against the developers. That's more than you can say for, for example, the United States Government; if I disagree with tax policy or federal monetary policy, I (may) have the option to leave, but changing the system would take a lifetime, if its even possible. Creating a new system without moving countries would inevitably end with the police at my doorstep. Miners want money…

So if developers released a "jubilee" version of the software that took all ETH away from addresses that hadn't spent anything in 5 years, and distributed it evenly across all Ethereum addresses less 2 years old (which one might imagine would be a boon to a large number of users), would that be sufficient to upgrade the network?

Asking because one huge advantage I see in Bitcoin's upgrade procedure is that developers alone can't change the monetary policy -- i.e. developers can't just bribe users to screw over investors. I'm curious why the "All Core Devs call dictates software releases" upgrade process is considered an acceptable alternative?

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

#483

Post by jude- » Sun, Mar 14, 2021, 3:09 AM UTC

hanniabu wrote: post #469

jude- wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This is how it works in Ethereum as well So is Ethereum not going to PoS if miners say no? > Blockstream does the same, it's literally no different. Every soft fork was voted on by miners. Developers provide the code, but it only activates with miner consent.

> So is Ethereum not going to PoS if miners say no? Correct > Every soft fork was voted on by miners. Developers provide the code, but it only activates with miner consent. Again, it's the same process with Ethereum. Not sure if this is just a misunderstanding or if you're reading something that says this isn't the case, but if it's the latter then I suggest taking a good hard look at continuing to use this source fo…

> Correct

Bear with me here, but I strongly suspect that this is not the case. Because PoS doesn't need miners, it seems the system can transition to PoS at any time and there's nothing miners can do to stop it. So unless the miners also happen to control over 50% of the staked ETH supply, miners don't have a say at all.

EDIT: Don't get me wrong -- I wish Ethereum could only upgrade with overwhelming miner consent. It would check the power of developers to alter the monetary policy as capriciously as they have done so far.

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

#484

Post by SubiculumCode » Sun, Mar 14, 2021, 4:05 AM UTC

hanniabu wrote: post #468

casi wrote: post #441

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Matic is not an L2 though, it is a side chain. The reason L2s like optimism are exciting is because they inherit the security of ethereum mainnet. (matic has its own consensus mechanisms).

Optimism also isn't rent seeking with their own coin. All gas is still paid in ETH.

I would call L2 coins rent seekers. Reducing gas,increasing thruput among other things

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

#485

Post by hanniabu » Sun, Mar 14, 2021, 4:08 AM UTC

SubiculumCode wrote: post #484

hanniabu wrote: post #468

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Optimism also isn't rent seeking with their own coin. All gas is still paid in ETH.

I would call L2 coins rent seekers. Reducing gas,increasing thruput among other things

Exactly, it's a money grab. Optimism doesn't have a coin and have no plans to create one. ETH is be the only way to pay for gas on their rollup just as is the case on L1.

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

#486

Post by hanniabu » Sun, Mar 14, 2021, 4:46 AM UTC

jude- wrote: post #483

hanniabu wrote: post #469

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> So is Ethereum not going to PoS if miners say no? Correct > Every soft fork was voted on by miners. Developers provide the code, but it only activates with miner consent. Again, it's the same process with Ethereum. Not sure if this is just a misunderstanding or if you're reading something that says this isn't the case, but if it's the latter then I suggest taking a good hard look at continuing to use this source fo…

> Correct Bear with me here, but I strongly suspect that this is not the case. Because PoS doesn't need miners, it seems the system can transition to PoS at any time and there's nothing miners can do to stop it. So unless the miners also happen to control over 50% of the staked ETH supply, miners don't have a say at all. EDIT: Don't get me wrong -- I wish Ethereum could only upgrade with overwhelming miner consent. I…

This is actually a current issue that's being discussed because the transition fully relies on the miners to make hand off the transition because of the contention with moving to PoS. One possibility is that miners will fork the chain, although that's not necessarily a huge concern because the community will follow the PoS chain. Another possibility, and I'm a bit fuzzy on the details, but it has to do with them re-mining the same block over and over so the transition block never happens (or something like that).

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

#487

Post by dmingod666 » Sun, Mar 14, 2021, 5:12 AM UTC

delaaxe wrote: post #371

dmingod666 wrote: post #296

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Gold held it's value before we started counting the years from the death of christ. It was valuable when britain was pairing criminals and prostitutes in handcuffs and shipping them to the US to populate the damn place. It is valuable even today when there are people willing to risk death just to reach its shore.. I am willing to bet it will remain being valuable even when America becomes an irrelevant once-was in a…

> britain was pairing criminals and prostitutes in handcuffs and shipping them to the US to populate the damn place What can I Google to know more about this? I though it was also the case about Australia

My bad, It was the french, not the british:

http://www.jocelyngreen.com/2017/01/09/louisiana-and-france%...

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

#488

Post by pinoli » Sun, Mar 14, 2021, 5:30 AM UTC

michaelsbradley wrote: post #423

pinoli wrote: post #401

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

thanks for the info, I knew all of that. the problem here is not the expected switch to PoS, the problem is how do we go about reaching consensus about something in Ethereum. Is Vitalik calling the shots? I hope not. So if a small group of people is very determined and excited, doesn't mean shit to the ecosystem at large.

I am not saying this EIP, or PoS, are bad. It's the way you do it that matters.

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

#489

Post by dmingod666 » Sun, Mar 14, 2021, 5:33 AM UTC

mratsim wrote: post #460

dmingod666 wrote: post #290

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It doesn't help that the shadiest of people use crypto and ICOs to cheat and steal from gullible people. The suspicion and guard is up because the stakes are different. Let's say you write an opensource logging library for your language and promote it on HN - the stakes are low for everyone involved. Let's say you're trying to launch rabbit token that's going to be the next only-fans replacement. You have a ton of mo…

It's likely that the shadiest people use cash though.

I hear the most dreaded criminals tend to breath air and a shocking percentage of them are found to be mammals.

Jokes aside, How do you compare an ICO to cash? Its more closer to an IPO process.. if you started allowing listings in the stock market backed solely by 5-6 nice LinkedIn profiles and some 'white-paper' I'm sure the exact same people will list their companies in the stock exchanges as well.. Unlike an IPO, there is no vetting process, there are no mandatory disclosures or oversight.

That is freedom from central control, sure. But, the cost of freedom is the risk that gets loaded on the part of the investors. This gap is wide open for people that are thus inclined to cheat and make a quick buck. I am not berating crypto, but, I have a lot of confidence in criminals going after easy money that doesn't have too many down sides.

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

#490

Post by mratsim » Sun, Mar 14, 2021, 6:56 AM UTC

jkhdigital wrote: post #474

mratsim wrote: post #465

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's the same when currencies around the world stopped using the gold standard and became floating across each other. I'd say the value of currencies is that you have to pay your taxes in one that is legal tender. In that case, the value of Eth is that you have to pay transaction fees in Eth. You decided how valuable those transactions are.

Governments have a monopoly on issuing fiat currencies, but for PoS cryptocurrencies there is no enforced scarcity—any DApp that can run on Ethereum can easily run on any of an infinite number of Ethereum clones, so why bother using the expensive congested network?

I think you have the chain of causality wrong.

The Ethereum network is congested because it has users. Ethereum has the critical mass and first mover advantage.

The clones need to be sufficiently attractive (10x ?) to break that hold, it's not a technical problem but an economic, marketing and educational one.

Scarcity is unrelated to network congestion or usage.