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Ethereum Proof-of-Stake

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Re: Ethereum Proof-of-Stake

#11

Post by capableweb »

TacticalCoder wrote: post #9

> There are two key equivocation rules a validator must follow, taken from the Gasper paper: > > Double vote - no validator makes two distinct attestations for the same target block > > Surround vote - no validator makes an attestation that surrounds or is surrounded by a previous attestation Which are both punished by having the saked ETHs being "slashed" (32 ETHs staked, you end up losing 16 of the 32). I never und…

> So it's impossible to stake without risking your ETHs getting slashed, even if the staker is honest.

I mean, the entire point of staking your ETH is to say "Hey, I'm willing to risk these ETH to \"prove\" that I'm a honest validator and that my node is secure. If I fuck up, I'm willing to accept the punishment". Without risking those ETH, it means nothing to stake ETH, and would break down the idea behind it.

I'm not sure if you fundamentally miss the idea behind staking, or if I'm missing something obvious in your critique of staking.

Re: Ethereum Proof-of-Stake

#12

Post by niemandhier »

whatisweb3 wrote: post #7
YetAnotherNick wrote: post #2

I have seen description like this so many times, but no guide seems to describe exactly how everything is done in decentralised way. "The validators for each slot are assigned to committees". By whom? Also what if there is network partition for these 12 seconds. It's not very unlikely that some country could be completely cutoff from the internet for some time due to anything from natural or political reasons. Could…

According to Eth docs: > One validator is randomly selected to be a block proposer in every slot. This validator is responsible for creating a new block and sending it out to other nodes on the network. Also in every slot, a committee of validators is randomly chosen, whose votes are used to determine the validity of the block being proposed. The annotated code for this can be found in [2]. [1] https://github.com/eth…

Maybe I am stupid, but at least to me its not obvious how one would randomly select a member in a decentralized way, assuming some actors are malicious?

Re: Ethereum Proof-of-Stake

#13

Post by ricochet11 »

YetAnotherNick wrote: post #2

I have seen description like this so many times, but no guide seems to describe exactly how everything is done in decentralised way. "The validators for each slot are assigned to committees". By whom? Also what if there is network partition for these 12 seconds. It's not very unlikely that some country could be completely cutoff from the internet for some time due to anything from natural or political reasons. Could…

https://benjaminion.xyz/eth2-annotated-spec/phase0/beacon-ch...

Re: Ethereum Proof-of-Stake

#14

Post by RL_Quine »

whatisweb3 wrote: post #10
mmastrac wrote: post #6

I can't see governments allowing PoW to continue to exist in our current climate (in all senses). How would Bitcoin ever move over to PoS like this? Would it just be a Bitcoin hard fork?

Yes it would need a hard fork - but Bitcoin community is notoriously resistant to change, so it probably would not happen for some years or decades.

It's actually a soft fork to change the consensus method believe it or not, even changing to a new proof of work scheme is completely backwards compatible. It's not a good idea and it's sort of ridiculous, but it is technically doable. If you felt inclined, we could change the transaction format, switch the scripting language to x86 assembly, issue new currencies- all in a soft fork.

Re: Ethereum Proof-of-Stake

#15

Post by capableweb »

RL_Quine wrote: post #3
YetAnotherNick wrote: post #2

I have seen description like this so many times, but no guide seems to describe exactly how everything is done in decentralised way. "The validators for each slot are assigned to committees". By whom? Also what if there is network partition for these 12 seconds. It's not very unlikely that some country could be completely cutoff from the internet for some time due to anything from natural or political reasons. Could…

Generally we've described this sort of research as "review resistant", rather than being secure in some classical sense. How Ethereum and other cryptocurrencies actually work is often eagerly explained but completely unfathomable on closer inspection. Concerns raised are fixed with additional complexity repeatedly until the reviewer grows weary of attempting to piece it together. Consequently there's sufficient confl…

That's a gross misrepresentation of how it works in the real-world.

Do you believe the same about cryptography? Since you can't understand it, and few really understand the full system, algorithms and functions, it must be "review resistant" rather than actually safe to use?

Re: Ethereum Proof-of-Stake

#16

Post by bowsamic »

RL_Quine wrote: post #3
YetAnotherNick wrote: post #2

I have seen description like this so many times, but no guide seems to describe exactly how everything is done in decentralised way. "The validators for each slot are assigned to committees". By whom? Also what if there is network partition for these 12 seconds. It's not very unlikely that some country could be completely cutoff from the internet for some time due to anything from natural or political reasons. Could…

Generally we've described this sort of research as "review resistant", rather than being secure in some classical sense. How Ethereum and other cryptocurrencies actually work is often eagerly explained but completely unfathomable on closer inspection. Concerns raised are fixed with additional complexity repeatedly until the reviewer grows weary of attempting to piece it together. Consequently there's sufficient confl…

"I don't get it so it must be false" that's what you sound like right now

Re: Ethereum Proof-of-Stake

#19

Post by capableweb »

niemandhier wrote: post #12
whatisweb3 wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

According to Eth docs: > One validator is randomly selected to be a block proposer in every slot. This validator is responsible for creating a new block and sending it out to other nodes on the network. Also in every slot, a committee of validators is randomly chosen, whose votes are used to determine the validity of the block being proposed. The annotated code for this can be found in [2]. [1] https://github.com/eth…

Maybe I am stupid, but at least to me its not obvious how one would randomly select a member in a decentralized way, assuming some actors are malicious?

There are tons of different ways of doing so, with their own set of pros/cons. I'm not familiar with exactly how Eth2 does it, but I suppose your curiosity is a general one, not specific to Eth2, so here is how it works for Algorand as an example using VRFs (Verifiable Random Function):

> The VRF takes a secret key and a value and produces a pseudorandom output, with a proof that anyone can use to verify the result. The VRF functions similar to a lottery and is used to choose leaders to propose a block and committee members to vote on a block. This VRF output, when executed for an account, is used to sample from a binomial distribution to emulate a call for every Algo in a user’s account. The more Algos in an account, the better chance the account has of winning – it’s as if every Algo in an account gets its own lottery. This method ensures that a user does not gain any advantage by creating multiple accounts.

https://www.algorand.com/Algorand%20Protocol.pdf

The search term you're looking for is "decentralized leader election", searching for that on Google or Google Scholar gives you bunch of results ranging from random musings to academic papers.

Re: Ethereum Proof-of-Stake

#20

Post by whatisweb3 »

TacticalCoder wrote: post #9

> There are two key equivocation rules a validator must follow, taken from the Gasper paper: > > Double vote - no validator makes two distinct attestations for the same target block > > Surround vote - no validator makes an attestation that surrounds or is surrounded by a previous attestation Which are both punished by having the saked ETHs being "slashed" (32 ETHs staked, you end up losing 16 of the 32). I never und…

> An attacker accessing a staking node can, on purpose, double vote or surround vote to get the ETH slashed.

What is the incentive for them to do that? If the node is secured physically they would need to break into a person's house and decrypt whatever security setup they might have in place. The whistleblower reward is typically fairly small, probably not worth the criminal behavior.

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