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Ethereum Has Issues

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Re: Ethereum Has Issues

#71

Post by thebean11 »

cuteboy19 wrote: post #66
thebean11 wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

For sure, DeFi loans aren't practical at the moment (for anything but speculation), and may never be practical for something like a mortgage or even a credit card. I still find it pretty mind blowing that an algorithm can loan me money.

For insurance I don't agree. Something basic like weather insurance (widely used in agriculture) is already possible. The hardest part is getting the weather information onchain in a way that's trusted by the buyers and sellers of the insurance. Weather oracles do exist though.

Re: Ethereum Has Issues

#72

Post by jamwt »

capableweb wrote: post #41
Animats wrote: post #23

The system is functioning as designed. The suckers are being fleeced. It is in the nature of markets to move money from the many to the few .

Not sure if you're arguing against Ethereum, cryptocurrencies as a whole, or capitalism as a whole? Your point would be better understood if you explained what you mean a bit more.

Unregulated capitalism. Regulation limits how much information/expertise disparity can tip the scales. It doesn't prevent it altogether (nor is that a constructive objective), but limits it so the distribution between the winners and losers ensures still reasonable outcomes for the loser.

All that's happening in crypto is the same exploitative games/vehicles that happened in other markets before regulation protected the least informed and least Machiavellian players from the worst outcomes. There's no real innovation in that respect.

Re: Ethereum Has Issues

#73

Post by delaaxe »

undersuit wrote: post #53
MichaelRazum wrote: post #24

Have to agree. Just curios what happens to the whole thing if Ethereum switches to POS.

I don't think Ethereum will ever switch. The miners control the chain now, POS will disrupt that. The miners can't make an orderly exit of resources or to a new coin so they will persist on the dominant PoW-Eth while PoS-Eth loses all chain resources.

If the POW miners continue mining, that’ll create a fork which will quickly become unprofitable because of the difficulty bomb, and all of the stable coins on the fork will become valueless rendering the fork useless.

Re: Ethereum Has Issues

#74

Post by yucky »

jqpabc123 wrote: post #30

Without regulation, the marketplace --- any marketplace --- becomes a platform for scams and extortion. Show me a marketplace without regulation and I will show you a marketplace best avoided if possible.

>Show me a marketplace without regulation and I will show you a marketplace best avoided if possible.

I buy all of my vegetables from the roadside stands that are completely unregulated, and often set up in proximity to other stands with other offerings. I get a higher quality at a lower price - works out great.

Re: Ethereum Has Issues

#75

Post by pavel_lishin »

pshc wrote: post #62

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.…

> once proof of stake finality arrives

Which it hasn't, despite being six months away for years now.

You cannot handwave away problems by promising you'll fix them with X in Y months, when you consistently fail to deliver X.

Re: Ethereum Has Issues

#76

Post by otterley »

px43 wrote: post #70

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 th…

Can you elaborate on some of these “insane advancements”?

Re: Ethereum Has Issues

#77

Post by delaaxe »

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.…

> As of 2022 the oracle problem still hasn't been solved

What do you mean by that? I thought ChainLink solved that pretty well

Re: Ethereum Has Issues

#78

Post by itsoktocry »

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.

>It could seriously bring down insurance margins if you no longer have drones of people administering policies.

Instead you might a bunch of people with zero actuarial experience gambling on policies. I agree, the concept is interesting, no regulation makes everything a crapshoot.

Re: Ethereum Has Issues

#79

Post by latchkey »

undersuit wrote: post #53
MichaelRazum wrote: post #24

Have to agree. Just curios what happens to the whole thing if Ethereum switches to POS.

I don't think Ethereum will ever switch. The miners control the chain now, POS will disrupt that. The miners can't make an orderly exit of resources or to a new coin so they will persist on the dominant PoW-Eth while PoS-Eth loses all chain resources.

> The miners control the chain now

"difficulty bomb"

Re: Ethereum Has Issues

#80

Post by WJW »

thebean11 wrote: post #71
cuteboy19 wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

For sure, DeFi loans aren't practical at the moment (for anything but speculation), and may never be practical for something like a mortgage or even a credit card. I still find it pretty mind blowing that an algorithm can loan me money. For insurance I don't agree. Something basic like weather insurance (widely used in agriculture) is already possible. The hardest part is getting the weather information onchain in a…

> I still find it pretty mind blowing that an algorithm can loan me money.

Algorithmic lending has been a thing for decades though. What do you think a credit score is for if not a tool to let computers decide whether to give you credit or not?

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