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Ethereum Has Issues

blog.dshr.org

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Re: Ethereum Has Issues

#61

Post by tootie »

bulbosaur123 wrote: post #28

What useful has Ethereum created apart from providing an ever-bloating platform for generation of infinite digital-only tokens? As of 2022 the oracle problem still hasn't been solved, so actual decentralized, objective real life object-to-blockchain interaction is impossible. Monero added fully anonymous crypto that is used by most of the dark web. USDT, USDC provided stablecoins that can circumvent what fiat can't.…

Reading this blog post kinda flies in the face of crypto being more transparent than fiat. The raw data may be transparent, but the misuse/abuse are incredibly cryptic. And can only be rectified the goodwill of open source code contributors.

Re: Ethereum Has Issues

#62

Post by pshc »

While many contracts within Ethereum have clear flaws, that doesn't mean Eth as a whole is broken.

Time bandit attacks go away once proof of stake finality arrives. Also, trading ought to be done in Layer 2s. Does MEV work on L2s?

Re: certain token drops wasting lots of gas, it's up to the token authors to use an implementation that avoids gas wars.

Once you go into claiming equivalences with P = NP, you've lost me. Theoretical optimums are an academic game, in reality you can get 95% of the way there with heuristics.

> Because Ethereum transactions are programs, the halting problem means that it isn't possible to accurately predict the resources needed to execute them.

Ah, more appeals to theory. They're programs with a low ceiling on the number of steps and possible codepaths. They barely even have loops half the time. Estimating isn't that hard in practice.

Re: Ethereum Has Issues

#64

Post by tootie »

rurp wrote: post #59
chrisco255 wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Show me a regulated market that is free of front-running. It doesn't exist.

There are varying degrees of front running and a well regulated market will generally have much less of it. It's kind of like saying "show me a market without corruption". Obviously all markets have some amount of shady behavior, but it hardly means every market is equally corrupt.

Show me a human endeavor of any kind free of corruption.

Re: Ethereum Has Issues

#65

Post by asasidh »

jmyeet wrote: post #51

So Crypto Andys like to hand-wave about the risk of a 51% attack but consider this: > This is in addition to the long-standing concentration of Ethereum mining power, with normally three and sometimes only two mining pools controlling over 50% of the mining power. There is further hand-waving about how Proof-of-Stake (over Proof-of-Waste) will magically fix these problems. But it's actually this PoW computing power t…

"So much of Crytpo can be explained by Bitcoin FOMO. Everyone just jumps on the latest shitcoin or NFT because "I'm not missing out this time".

This 200%

Re: Ethereum Has Issues

#66

Post by cuteboy19 »

thebean11 wrote: post #54
jmyeet wrote: post #51

So Crypto Andys like to hand-wave about the risk of a 51% attack but consider this: > This is in addition to the long-standing concentration of Ethereum mining power, with normally three and sometimes only two mining pools controlling over 50% of the mining power. There is further hand-waving about how Proof-of-Stake (over Proof-of-Waste) will magically fix these problems. But it's actually this PoW computing power t…

I think there's at least some value that can potentially be created. The fact that you can take out a loan or buy insurance and your counterparty is a smart contract is pretty interesting. It could seriously bring down insurance margins if you no longer have drones of people administering policies. Obviously remains to be seen how practical it is.

In DeFi to take out a loan of $100 you need to have collateral worth $200 or more. If the value of the collateral ever goes below $200 then it is immediately autosold. Moreover the collateral has to be on the blockchain as well, so concrete assets like houses cannot be used for this purpose.

The main issue with insurance is actually assessment. All smart contracts do is replace execution, which was never a hassle to begin with.

Re: Ethereum Has Issues

#67

Post by bobkazamakis »

jmyeet wrote: post #51

So Crypto Andys like to hand-wave about the risk of a 51% attack but consider this: > This is in addition to the long-standing concentration of Ethereum mining power, with normally three and sometimes only two mining pools controlling over 50% of the mining power. There is further hand-waving about how Proof-of-Stake (over Proof-of-Waste) will magically fix these problems. But it's actually this PoW computing power t…

correct. the eternal september of crypto andys who don't understand anything about the design of the systems they wax on about has nuked the fridge.

Re: Ethereum Has Issues

#68

Post by delaaxe »

vmception wrote: post #17

> We found two blocks in our 12 day span, 14,217,123 and 14,241,282, for which miner profits from MEV exceeded four times the block reward. I hope this becomes more common knowledge! All mining calculators are wrong as they predict earnings that are upwards of 80% lower than reality, for some people. There have been extended periods of time (weeks, months) where this has been true. This is also one of the promises of…

Rocket Pool, a decentralized Ethereum staking protocol, distributes MEV profits to stakers

Re: Ethereum Has Issues

#69

Post by 1penny42cents »

thebean11 wrote: post #54
jmyeet wrote: post #51

So Crypto Andys like to hand-wave about the risk of a 51% attack but consider this: > This is in addition to the long-standing concentration of Ethereum mining power, with normally three and sometimes only two mining pools controlling over 50% of the mining power. There is further hand-waving about how Proof-of-Stake (over Proof-of-Waste) will magically fix these problems. But it's actually this PoW computing power t…

I think there's at least some value that can potentially be created. The fact that you can take out a loan or buy insurance and your counterparty is a smart contract is pretty interesting. It could seriously bring down insurance margins if you no longer have drones of people administering policies. Obviously remains to be seen how practical it is.

The problem is that the loudest backers overshoot and oversell the true potential.

The truly innovative people are those who add the proper constraints and work within them to solve the problems where blockchains actually fit best.

Re: Ethereum Has Issues

#70

Post by px43 »

Ha, Flash Boys 2.0 was from 2019. This blog post is literally "I read a thing from three years ago and have lost faith in something that I never believed in in the first place".

As someone who knows and has worked with all the people involved with the write-ups referenced in this blog post, I can pretty confidently say that the author is way way behind here. There have been some insane advancements in recent years that would blow his mind.

MEV harvesting is actually an insanely fascinating field of study, and it comes down to consensus in a world where information can only move as fast as the speed of light.

Front-running is a general problem where, if you can find out that someone wants to buy something, and can buy it first and sell it to the person who actually want it at a premium. This gets really interesting in the blockchain space, because Miners (Validators) decide the order of transactions, and in some cases validators can be incentivized/coerced to move around transactions in a way that might be beneficial for certain users. This is what is referred to as "Miner Extractable Value".

Yes it's a problem, yes there are mitigations, yes there are fun and weird ways around those mitigations, etc.

This is what happens when people are incentivized to take a really good hard look at what global consensus really means. At a high level, most users don't really need to know or care about any of it, but it exists as a parasitic force constantly extracting value from the network. Still, IMO the parasites that feed off MEV are at a significant disadvantage compared with those who feed of legacy financial networks (for more on that, you can read the actual Flash Boys book https://www.amazon.com/Flash-Boys-Wall-Street-Revolt/dp/0393...).

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