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Ethereum just activated its ‘London’ hard fork

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Re: Ethereum just activated its ‘London’ hard fork

#161

Post by SkyMarshal »

lasagnaphil wrote: post #65
leesec wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

https://vitalik.ca/general/2020/11/06/pos2020.html >For certain kinds of 51% attacks (particularly, reverting finalized blocks), there is a built-in "slashing" mechanism in the proof of stake consensus by which a large portion of the attacker's stake (and no one else's stake) can get automatically destroyed.

To be honest, even without the actual 51% attacks happening, it would really suck to live in a world where just one entity had more than half ownership of a currency used by the people.

>it would really suck to live in a world where just one entity had more than half ownership of a currency used by the people.

You mean, kinda like in the real world?

[1]:https://www.oxfam.org/en/press-releases/worlds-billionaires-...

[2]:https://www.oxfam.org/en/5-shocking-facts-about-extreme-glob...

Re: Ethereum just activated its ‘London’ hard fork

#162

Post by chizhik-pyzhik »

etaioinshrdlu wrote: post #96

If Ethereum can hard fork like this, it stands to reason as well that the 21 Million Bitcoin limit is a lot more changeable than Bitcoin proponents would say. Or the opposite is true - and Ethereum is under heavily centralized control.

The lead eth developer Vitalik has an excellent blog post addressing what it takes to fork a blockchain- https://vitalik.ca/general/2021/03/23/legitimacy.html

The key takeaway is that yes, it's ultimately just controlled by majority agreement between users.

Re: Ethereum just activated its ‘London’ hard fork

#163

Post by BitwiseFool »

X6S1x6Okd1st wrote: post #108
chrisco255 wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That won't happen until the merge to proof of stake, which is supposed to happen early 2022.

I'm theory London could because it reduces the mining reward, but MEV has really thrown a wrench into that plan

MEV?

Re: Ethereum just activated its ‘London’ hard fork

#164

Post by littlestymaar »

DaftDank wrote: post #6

Can someone explain to me how PoS is not centralized? The whole point of crypto and the blockchain is decentralization, no? I feel like crypto/blockchain will end up looking nothing like how it was intended, and be regulated to the point that it's just the next iteration of the traditional banking system, where the current power holders continue holding the power. Maybe I was naive to ever think it would be any diffe…

PoS is decentralized as soon as you have a big number of stakers. The hard thing being “how do you know that there are in fact a big number of people and not just a bunch of guys hidden behind a huge number of aliases” (the Sybil attack problem) and this is for this exact problem that proof of work helps (contrary to popular belief, Proof of work has nothing to do with double spending).

For this reason you cannot build a trust-less distributed network with proof of stake alone: you'll need some kind of proof of waste to bootstrap it.

Re: Ethereum just activated its ‘London’ hard fork

#165

Post by miguelmota »

jcbrand wrote: post #160
pa7x1 wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How is it more centralized than PoW? I see multiple factors that hamper decentralization: - Fixed costs that act as barrier of entry - Economies of scale that lead to centralization - Geographic factors (operation costs being different in different parts of the world, regulation/taxation, supply chain...) This is how I see each factor playing out in both scenarios: - Fixed costs: PoS runs on consumer-grade hardware,…

Concerning economies of scale, usually AFAIK the more coins you stake, the more of a say you have in how blocks are propagated. That's to me similar, if not worse than with PoW.

Stakers in a PoS system are incentivized to do what's best for the network. It wouldn't make sense for them to stake large amounts of funds and do something that could make Ethereum less valuable. The current marketcap of Ethereum is $325B, so a 51% attack in a PoS system means the attacker would need $165B. Even if a really bad attack occurred, the majority of validators can decide to fork (eg DAO fork). The social layer of Ethereum is a hidden force and I believe the majority are honest actors that would support any Ethereum improvement proposals that make the network more fair and decentralized.

Re: Ethereum just activated its ‘London’ hard fork

#166

Post by Tepix »

littlestymaar wrote: post #164
DaftDank wrote: post #6

Can someone explain to me how PoS is not centralized? The whole point of crypto and the blockchain is decentralization, no? I feel like crypto/blockchain will end up looking nothing like how it was intended, and be regulated to the point that it's just the next iteration of the traditional banking system, where the current power holders continue holding the power. Maybe I was naive to ever think it would be any diffe…

PoS is decentralized as soon as you have a big number of stakers. The hard thing being “how do you know that there are in fact a big number of people and not just a bunch of guys hidden behind a huge number of aliases” (the Sybil attack problem) and this is for this exact problem that proof of work helps (contrary to popular belief, Proof of work has nothing to do with double spending). For this reason you cannot bui…

Right, for example Avalanche now has more than 1000 validators which is the most that i've seen for a PoS blockchain.

Re: Ethereum just activated its ‘London’ hard fork

#167

Post by fidesomnes »

cwkoss wrote: post #155
tastyfreeze wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is why I think XRP will ultimately be a winner. No mining, no staking, just validating transactions.

I think XRP will go down as history as the earliest notable shitcoin. I wrote it off years ago. Is it doing anything with real utility yet?

As a currency exchange handling $800m in transactions in the last day it seems to be doing just fine https://xrpcharts.ripple.com/ surely that is no real utility for you but for someone out there, it is a whole lot of value.

Re: Ethereum just activated its ‘London’ hard fork

#168

Post by arberx »

remir wrote: post #113

Gas fees becoming more predictable is nice, but the fact they can get so large for small transactions is quite frustrating. I wanted to swap a bunch of coins worth 8$ into another token and the gas fees were around 28$, which is just insane.

Most clients haven't updated to the new fee model. Once they do you'll see similar if not less gas fees (strictly due to better prediction).

Re: Ethereum just activated its ‘London’ hard fork

#169

Post by lorenzq »

Tepix wrote: post #166
littlestymaar wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

PoS is decentralized as soon as you have a big number of stakers. The hard thing being “how do you know that there are in fact a big number of people and not just a bunch of guys hidden behind a huge number of aliases” (the Sybil attack problem) and this is for this exact problem that proof of work helps (contrary to popular belief, Proof of work has nothing to do with double spending). For this reason you cannot bui…

Right, for example Avalanche now has more than 1000 validators which is the most that i've seen for a PoS blockchain.

There are >1000 Algorand validators[1] and >2000 Cardano validators[2]

[1] https://metrics.algorand.org/

[2] https://pooltool.io/

Re: Ethereum just activated its ‘London’ hard fork

#170

Post by marcusverus »

tux3 wrote: post #57
exo762 wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

May I ask you to elaborate a bit? What is they are centralized around? Capital? Misbehaving capital can easily be destroyed in PoS by a fork. Please see Steem/Hive case.

I think the idea is that if piles of money grow proportionally to their size, the biggest pile of money will grow the fastest, effectively becoming the central point where power is concentrated. With proof of work, the same effect exists, thought it involves a loop where hashrate is exchanged for money, which is converted into more efficient hashrate at a TSMC fab. An actor that openly attacks the network will quickl…

>…effectively becoming the central point where power is concentrated.

More ETH/= more power. In my understanding, an attacker would need to control half of all staked ETH to stage a 51% attack, which would require many billions of dollars. But actually exercising this control by attacking the network would undermine the network’s security/utility, potentially sending ETH to zero and obliterating the wealth of the attacker.

This is, supposedly, a strength of PoS: the more ETH you have, the less incentive you have to attack/destroy the system.

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