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Ethereum will use around 99.95% less energy post merge

blog.ethereum.org

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Re: Ethereum will use around 99.95% less energy post merge

#821

Post by SwagtimusPrime »

leishman wrote: post #600
roelb wrote: post #597

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Proof of work is no different in this regard: more capital, more mining power, more control. Miners interests don't always align with the network's users interests (see gas fees). Proof of work isn't more decentralized either (a few mining pool delegators control bitcoin), eth2 proof of stake is more secure because of the pseudorandom validator selection.

It is very different: The difference is that PoW is censorship resistant. Anybody can be a miner and existing miners cannot censor new miners. Performing new work is external to the network state. In PoS, existing stakers can prevent new stakers from registering. Very important distinction.

Yeah sure, let me just buy a container full of ASICs worth hundreds of thousands of $$$ and I'll start mining: https://twitter.com/SGBarbour/status/1390504269925654532

Re: Ethereum will use around 99.95% less energy post merge

#822

Post by jude- »

eyezick wrote: post #727
vbuterin wrote: post #719

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you're conflating _consensus_ and _governance_; the two are quite different. It's not PoW vs PoS that allows a chain to resist a coordinated attempt by elites to force a protocol change, it's users personally verifying the chain (and so automatically rejecting chains that violate the rules even if >51% of PoW/PoS nodes support those chains). So no, PoS is not "how our current financial system works". Our curr…

I'd further add on to say PoS has the benefit of being able to eliminate bad actors unilaterally. You can't stop anyone from attacking a PoW chain over and over again. Attacking a PoS chain is much riskier as the attacker's stakes are held on chain and are at the mercy of the community who uses the network.

Why does the attacker need to hold or buy any coins? All the attacker has to do to wreck havoc is prevent quorum from being reached. This can be done by knocking validators offline (which is a slashable penalty), or hacking validators and making them slash themselves, or hacking an exchange or two in order to amass control of 33% or more of the voting power.

Re: Ethereum will use around 99.95% less energy post merge

#824

Post by SwagtimusPrime »

witweb wrote: post #603
fabioyy wrote: post #588

Earlier quoted context omitted.

people with money can buy mining factories and make decisions anyway.

Please read up on UASF and Bitcoin. People can buy tons of mining factories, but if a very large amount of nodes start rejecting blocks and therefore the rewards, miners start to rethink their stance very fast. There is no discussion here, history proves it.

and UASF are a thing in PoS as well, if some entity/entities acquire a majority of the staked coins users can simply fork the malicious actors out. It's functionally equivalent except that it's an order of magnitude more expensive to acquire the required coins as opposed to getting the equivalent in hashpower.

Re: Ethereum will use around 99.95% less energy post merge

#825

Post by SubiculumCode »

klyrs wrote: post #757
DickingAround wrote: post #726

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What do you mean? We totally got what we wanted; we have a deflationary currency we trade for goods and services. I'm 100% serious here; it's been working fine for quite a number of years. The fiat conversion is pretty noisy but BTC on average goes up in value in fiat terms at a fast pace. BTC is easy to turn it into stuff. No one has ever censored my transactions or asked for ID. Even if you buy something really exp…

Transaction fees were north of $50 a couple of weeks ago. Who's buying a pizza with that overhead? Genuinely asking, because I've a bridge to sell Before the edit window closes... 5 workarounds and counting. Are they interoperable, or is all this a thick layer of bullshit that users need to wade through to spend their "currency"? I see the plurality of "solutions" here indicative of a problem. Yes, you can fix anythi…

Via the Polygon commit chain, these issues are fixed. Polygon's adoption is through the roof, saving Ethereum's butt. Hence the massive price climb.

Re: Ethereum will use around 99.95% less energy post merge

#826

Post by [deleted] »

DickingAround wrote: post #726
simias wrote: post #650

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not like cryptocurrencies achieved any of their goals so far anyway. If it's about facilitating pyramid schemes and creating a worldwide casino we might as well do it efficiently and without wasting insane amounts of resources. I'm personally very happy for PoS and hope that it'll be successful, I would be a lot less annoyed with cryptocurrency bullshit if it wasn't so wasteful. With proof-of-stakes it basically…

What do you mean? We totally got what we wanted; we have a deflationary currency we trade for goods and services. I'm 100% serious here; it's been working fine for quite a number of years. The fiat conversion is pretty noisy but BTC on average goes up in value in fiat terms at a fast pace. BTC is easy to turn it into stuff. No one has ever censored my transactions or asked for ID. Even if you buy something really exp…

[deleted]

Re: Ethereum will use around 99.95% less energy post merge

#827

Post by ppf »

viscanti wrote: post #773
EugeneOZ wrote: post #763

Earlier quoted context omitted.

With PoS one can just buy _governance_, that's all. All you need to have more influence on (PoS-based) Etherium is a huge amount of money. More power to money-bags! So “fresh” idea :)

But as soon as someone bought 51% of ETH and abused their influence, their investment would go to zero. I'm not sure I get the scenario where it's worthwhile for someone to invest the amount it would take to get that significant of an ownership percentage and then do something that would just cause everyone else to leave and it to be worthless. Maybe I'm missing something here.

Apparently, 51% attacks aren't enough to put off investors, as ETC had 3 of them in one month last year.

Re: Ethereum will use around 99.95% less energy post merge

#828

Post by javitury »

everfree wrote: post #767
Taek wrote: post #674

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In practice a PoS network tends to have a participation rate of between 10% and 30%, and the 2-3 largest exchanges collectively tend to own between 10% and 50% of the total supply. And then also in practice most of the staking is performed by a small number of outsourced staking firms, which increases the power concentration even more. And it also makes hardforks more traumatic because your economy and your consensus…

>You can't fork an exchange off of the network without also disrupting every single user that parks funds on that exchange. Anyone who willingly opts into staking on a shady exchange, agreeing to a contract saying that they might be slashed, needs to be prepared to be slashed. On the other hand, any exchange that automatically opts user deposits into staking without notifying them should be criminally liable. That's…

> On the other hand, any exchange that automatically opts user deposits into staking without notifying them should be criminally liable.

One of the selling points of cryptocurrencies is that they make financial transactions and contracts possible without depending on a central authority.

Re: Ethereum will use around 99.95% less energy post merge

#829

Post by RhodoGSA »

smaddox wrote: post #659
tylercubell wrote: post #525

Algorand has been Proof of Stake for years (2019 MainNet launch) and it's actually carbon-negative [1]. It's a shame more people don't know about it. Its founder is a Turing-award-winning MIT professor (Silvio Micali) who solved the blockchain trilemma [2] with the Pure Proof of Stake consensus algorithm. The tech is leaps and bounds ahead of other cryptos. [1]: https://www.algorand.com/resources/news/carbon_negative…

I just read about it. It seems highly susceptible to disruption by a minority stake, via the birthday paradox. If only a fraction of the stake holders are validators at any given time, but the set of 1000 validators is selected randomly from token holders, then all you technically need is 1000 tokens (or more) and given enough time you will be selected as the only validator, right? You can then validate a fraudulent…

thats why currently the minimum stake amount is 32 eth. Also, you'd learn you were the validator for the cycle only when you are awarded eth. If you try to push through a false transaction you can get slashed (Losing some of your stake). all in all, makes it impractical at best.

Re: Ethereum will use around 99.95% less energy post merge

#830

Post by eloff »

leishman wrote: post #574

Proof of Stake is already how our current financial system works. The people with the most money make the decisions. Proof-of-Work is provably resistant to this, as evidenced by the 2017 blocksize debate where almost every large miner and bitcoin company wanted to change the protocol and it was fought off through grassroots efforts. A PoS currency will be controlled by a cabal of US financial institutions, and indire…

I don't think your example proves proof of work isn't vulnerable to the same effect. At best it proves it's not always vulnerable to that - but the same could technically happen with proof of stake.

Like it or not the Pareto principle or 80/20 rule may well be the most powerful law of the universe. It applies to everything from physical systems like stars and galaxies to social systems and individual human achievement.

I don't see why crytocurrency should be any different. Proof of work through cost of capital investment exhibits the exact same concentration of wealth and power, but at least PoS doesn't destroy the environment as a side effect.

I'm skeptical about why we need the decentralized aspect of cryto when it ends up centralizing anyway. Seems like a very inefficient way of doing things. Maybe we just want an immutable public ledger - but I could be wrong on that. It hasn't lived up to the hype yet.

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