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Attacking an Ethereum L2 with Unbridled Optimism

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Re: Attacking an Ethereum L2 with Unbridled Optimism

#131

Post by sophrocyne »

lhl wrote: post #127
sophrocyne wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For those interested in data supporting diversity comment (~82% geth) - https://www.ethernodes.org/ Re: GP comment - From a "trust" perspective, there is a distinct difference to call out between the integrity of data on the platform, and the trustworthiness of the platform itself (i.e., the ability for centralized control of all data) In an instance where an L2 is compromised, the potential impact is limited to the…

execution node (ETH 1.0) diversity is important, but actually more important moving forward is the consensus (beacon chain, fka Ethereum 2.0) diversity. The crawled data here shows that Prysm has almost 2/3s of that: https://migalabs.es/crawler/dashboard For a good recent/up-to-date summary of the differences, why it matters: https://ethereum.org/ms/developers/docs/nodes-and-clients/cl... And here's a good reference…

Doing my part with lighthouse!

Re: Attacking an Ethereum L2 with Unbridled Optimism

#132

Post by rawtxapp »

mhmmmmmm wrote: post #119
8note wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Strictly better than gold is not true. Gold can be traded without leaving an audit trail, and without a per transaction cost.

You still have transaction costs in the form of transport costs to get the gold to your personal location.

Yep, and obviously any kind of transportation like that will be tracked and easily traced, with exact weights and sizes.

By hopping on the lightning network, you're essentially anonymizing your payments as well as making them practically free.

Re: Attacking an Ethereum L2 with Unbridled Optimism

#133

Post by rawtxapp »

jimmydorry wrote: post #113
rawtxapp wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Look at it this way, if x = number of total users, routing nodes will grow O(log x), not O(c^x). The users can grow exponentially, the routing nodes won't because the marginal cost of processing an extra transaction from an end-user is very close to 0.

I thought the routing node was putting up some amount of Bitcoin per channel. Each channel would therefore have a non-zero cost (and each user requires a channel). I would need to go back and refresh my understand as it's been quite a while since I read the LN whitepaper, much less kept abreast of developments in that space.

When you fund a channel, the Bitcoin is still yours, you're not giving it away.

With batched channel open/closes, it'll be super cheap to open and close channels. The only cost you'd pay is the opportunity cost if your counterparty isn't sending transactions, so you're not collecting routing fees. If that's the case, you can just close the channel if you need to fund another channel and don't have spare Bitcoin for it, but that's about it.

Re: Attacking an Ethereum L2 with Unbridled Optimism

#134

Post by rawtxapp »

8note wrote: post #120
thebean11 wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No it's not. Even if everyone had channels with the same, single central node it would have more guarantees than Visa does. The single central node could not just decide to keep everyone's money, as participants have the option to create an L1 transaction to withdraw funds if node they have a channel with misbehaves.

> participants have the option to create an L1 transaction Theoretically they have that option, but in practice do they? Theoretically I can sue visa to get the right outcome too, which is a good guarantee

You can close a channel whenever you want, for whatever reason.

Re: Attacking an Ethereum L2 with Unbridled Optimism

#135

Post by thebean11 »

8note wrote: post #120
thebean11 wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No it's not. Even if everyone had channels with the same, single central node it would have more guarantees than Visa does. The single central node could not just decide to keep everyone's money, as participants have the option to create an L1 transaction to withdraw funds if node they have a channel with misbehaves.

> participants have the option to create an L1 transaction Theoretically they have that option, but in practice do they? Theoretically I can sue visa to get the right outcome too, which is a good guarantee

What do you mean? Why wouldn't they have that option in practice?

Re: Attacking an Ethereum L2 with Unbridled Optimism

#136

Post by scyclow »

8note wrote: post #112
scyclow wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

With respect to point 1, I'm sympathetic to your response, but I don't see things quite as bleakly for a few reasons: - NFTs create a scarcity of ownership, but they don't create a scarcity of enjoyment or experience. In fact, the entire NFT generative art community is based around the idea of viewing and enjoying pieces that you don't personally own. - I don't think scarcity of ownership is necessarily a bad thing.…

if youre not extracting a profit from people enjoying the art, why are you advocating for it? what is your skin in the game? if youre only advocating it to get rid of it by selling it, i dont think thats a genuine advocacy for the piece. im unclear that this scarcity is different from making a wordpress site with n posts, each one being a picture generated with the different parameters. i think the website version is…

Again, I think the act of "owning" it creates a much different relationship between the collector and that art than simply looking at it. They have skin in the game because they either spent money on the piece, or were able to mint it by being in the right place at the right time.

To be sure, a lot of the "advocacy" is exactly what you describe, where people are just trying to push their bags. But the advocacy I'm talking about is more about the social element of discussing the art with other people in the community.

The website is certainly a valid way to display a limited generative art collection, but it's a different experience. It means that the artist _can_ curate the collection and hide some of the rough edges of the algorithm... but then it loses some of its magic. NFTs have sort of enabled a new sub genre of generative art [1].

[1] https://tylerxhobbs.com/essays/2021/the-rise-of-long-form-ge...

Re: Attacking an Ethereum L2 with Unbridled Optimism

#137

Post by iskander »

8note wrote: post #111
iskander wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'll try to engage without pulling us into familiar debates. I have found, in a year of intensive use and research around the Ethereum ecosystem, here are a few things I like that wouldn't really work without an underlying immutable distributed ledger: 1) Creating limited editions of generative art. 2) "Forever" art like on-chain pixel and ASCII art. 3) Frankenstein-like adaptations of traditional fintech constructs…

I don't know what the third one entails, or whether a distributed ledger actually enables it without also having a centralized legal entity, but the other two seem like they already exist without a distributed ledger. The limited edition art is really just tracking receipts - you can do that over email if you want and it really doesn't have to be public. Non digital art does fine with private receipt tracking. You ca…

>The limited edition art is really just tracking receipts - you can do that over email if you want and it really doesn't have to be public. Non digital art does fine with private receipt tracking. You can also have a dedicated database that charges art owners a maintenance fee, and tracks who the current owner of each art piece. Basically free tier AWS.

I think this is a misunderstanding of what happens when a collection is created through a platform like Art Blocks. The generative code is frozen on chain, every minted image has a verifiably random initial seed, and each image is generated from the composition of these two elements. The number of random seeds which can occupy an "official" slot is preconfigured and cannot be later increased.

I promise you that this has significant impact on the feeling of working on generative art and what you think of as the final outcome of an art project. It cannot be replicated through some kind of ad-hoc receipt system that lacks algorithmic guarantees and is subject to modification or increase at any later point.

Re: Attacking an Ethereum L2 with Unbridled Optimism

#138

Post by BoorishBears »

miracle2k wrote: post #104
BoorishBears wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Does that answer anything I brought up? You know, the whole "relatively stable store of value paying for productive output rather than speculation and fraud?" We moved off the gold standard for a reason (and it's not all geopolitics...)

Bitcoin's volatility is not because of the fixed supply. If nothing else, new Bitcoins are still being issued. It is of course true that inflation encourages spending etc., but the difference between -2% and 2% does not cause 50% daily price movements. Bitcoin cannot be stable relative to other currencies as long as 90% of its forex volume is speculation. If there are businesses having long-term obligations and trade…

Where did I say Bitcoin's volatility is because of fixed supply.

Or even remotely imply it.

-

Once again the reply doesn't actually answer the basic question, because the answer is inconvenient.

I'd love one honest reply to the point grounded in any crypto, not even Bitcoin, being a "relatively stable store of value paying for productive output rather than speculation and fraud?"

Relatively stable being defined extremely generously in this context might I add! I won't hit you with a "gotcha!" because your coin of choice is widely used to pay for goods rather than fraud and speculation but it happened to fluctuate 10% or something, USD does that too...

Re: Attacking an Ethereum L2 with Unbridled Optimism

#139

Post by iskander »

simias wrote: post #87
iskander wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'll try to engage without pulling us into familiar debates. I have found, in a year of intensive use and research around the Ethereum ecosystem, here are a few things I like that wouldn't really work without an underlying immutable distributed ledger: 1) Creating limited editions of generative art. 2) "Forever" art like on-chain pixel and ASCII art. 3) Frankenstein-like adaptations of traditional fintech constructs…

>1) Creating limited editions of generative art. I personally think that it's not really an interesting feature. Creating scarcity out of something that ought not to be scarce is just a way to infiltrate capitalism in every aspect of our lives. Hacker culture historically went completely against that (phreaking, breaking DRM etc...) but I concede that it's more of a philosophical/political argument than a technical o…

Re: #3, there isn't really a meaningful oracle problem now that there are reliable oracles.

You can make synthetic assets which track prices of e.g. stocks. There are a few different protocols in this space, such as https://synthetix.io/. The biggest hurdle, I think, is regulatory -- is it legal to make and trade derivatives of $synthIBM and trade it like derivatives of $IBM?

Re: Attacking an Ethereum L2 with Unbridled Optimism

#140

Post by iskander »

8note wrote: post #115
fleddr wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would consider myself an informed skeptic that is selectively pro-crypto. I would first clear the air by saying this: yes, making money is an important use case of the current crypto industry, if not THE use case. I find it puzzling how people frown upon that. Making money (or at least getting paid) is the number one activity the average person spends a lifetime doing. Many in bullshit jobs that add no value. You c…

All an NFT is at heart a JSON blob like { Id: some unique namespaced string (aka, the part that is a non fungible token) Owner: reference to who currently owns it Payload: data that defines the content of the NFT } You can put this in a database if you want, or use a block chain as your data storage. I expect many of those teams you mentioned are solving their NFT issues by moving their NFTs from block chains onto po…

Is there a non-blockchain equivalent of gated access to resources based on ownership of a token? People do this a lot in the NFT space (access to certain chat channels based on owning an NFT), is anything like that happening (rather than theoretically possible) outside of crypto?
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