31–40 of 338 posts
What did you say? the more you have of the capital the more you influence the system? what a novel concept!
Monterey and legal systems based on structures that are at least partially built to take care of the needs of people of similar culture and geographic area? YUCK! Machine enforced plutocratic system where early adopters and syndicates have absolute power?! SIGN ME THE FUCK UP!
Earlier quoted context omitted.
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?
Cryptography has mathematical proofs of the underlying math that are rigorous. There are constraints such as breaking if a proof of an attack against the discrete log were to emerge or other constraints related to p=np. The implementations are also very close to formally verified if not fully formally verified. Nothing is perfect but cryptographic code has to be pretty bulletproof or a lot of systems would get owned.…
So is Eth2, see "Formal Verification of the Ethereum 2.0 Beacon Chain" by Franck Cassez, Joanne Fuller, Aditya Asgaonkar, paper (https://arxiv.org/abs/2110.12909) and source code (https://github.com/ConsenSys/eth2.0-dafny). More efforts to formally verify Eth2 is ongoing as well, by different entities.
> Nothing is perfect but cryptographic code has to be pretty bulletproof or a lot of systems would get owned
Same with Ethereum. The chance of having a major impact with a vulnerability is even higher I'd argue, as you can easily extract currency you can trade for USD, and the entire network is inter-connected, so finding targets to exploit becomes even easier.
Point still stands that cryptography goes over a lot of peoples head, but you don't hear those people complaining that because they don't understand it, no one does.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> 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 n…
Wait... Couldn't the same argument be used simply to move coins? "My keys, my coins. If I fuck up by holding my keys on an insecure computer, I deserve my coins to be stolen." . Yet there are HSM / hardware wallet so that it becomes way harder to "fuck up". There's a difference between a nefarious actor having its own ETH slashed and a nefarious actor finding a way to have an honest actor's ETH slashed. Isn't it poss…
Yes. The blame of coins getting stolen is often laid 100% on the victim. Who would have thought that being a bank is hard? /s
> There's a difference between a nefarious actor having its own ETH slashed and a nefarious actor finding a way to have an honest actor's ETH slashed.
Only for the owner of those ETH. For the network, they don't look different. Because of the decentral nature I don't think the network can even have a different view.
> I think you got my critique right: I find it's folly to stake on general purpose computers.
The part about general purpose computers wasn't clear from your original post. I too read it as "staking is inherently unsafe in general".
Doesn't this just mean the rich decide? Please correct me if I am wrong, but that is what it sounds to me. (And yes, I understand that POW means the 'compute-rich' decide.)
Ahh proof of stake, the nail in the coffin of decentralization. What did you say? the more you have of the capital the more you influence the system? what a novel concept! Monterey and legal systems based on structures that are at least partially built to take care of the needs of people of similar culture and geographic area? YUCK! Machine enforced plutocratic system where early adopters and syndicates have absolute…
Doesn't this just mean the rich decide? Please correct me if I am wrong, but that is what it sounds to me. (And yes, I understand that POW means the 'compute-rich' decide.)
As of yet there are no sound methods of securing a public ledger without either PoW, PoS or PoA. Bitcoin uses PoW, most central banking and traditional payment processors use PoA, Ethereum will soon use PoS.
Doesn't this just mean the rich decide? Please correct me if I am wrong, but that is what it sounds to me. (And yes, I understand that POW means the 'compute-rich' decide.)
It's not that the those proposing blocks can change the rules of the game, validators are only there to ensure that rules of the game are being followed.
Ahh proof of stake, the nail in the coffin of decentralization. What did you say? the more you have of the capital the more you influence the system? what a novel concept! Monterey and legal systems based on structures that are at least partially built to take care of the needs of people of similar culture and geographic area? YUCK! Machine enforced plutocratic system where early adopters and syndicates have absolute…
It’s a lot more challenging to run a mining operation that even breaks even over the long run than it is to buy a couple eth and start staking
All these systems have "whales" such that the individual can't do much except align with a whale. Applies to more than just crypto, too.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Cryptography has mathematical proofs of the underlying math that are rigorous. There are constraints such as breaking if a proof of an attack against the discrete log were to emerge or other constraints related to p=np. The implementations are also very close to formally verified if not fully formally verified. Nothing is perfect but cryptographic code has to be pretty bulletproof or a lot of systems would get owned.…
> The implementations are also very close to formally verified if not fully formally verified. So is Eth2, see "Formal Verification of the Ethereum 2.0 Beacon Chain" by Franck Cassez, Joanne Fuller, Aditya Asgaonkar, paper ( https://arxiv.org/abs/2110.12909 ) and source code ( https://github.com/ConsenSys/eth2.0-dafny ). More efforts to formally verify Eth2 is ongoing as well, by different entities. > Nothing is perf…
This is kinda where I’ve gotten to on this: consensus is pretty much safe. Smart contracting is very hard to do safely.
This is not unlike the guarantees in general computation. The metal is pretty safe. The further you get away from the metal, the more layers of abstraction you’re relying on functioning predictably.
To be clear, I’m not arguing with you and appreciate your point about formal verification of eth.
Doesn't this just mean the rich decide? Please correct me if I am wrong, but that is what it sounds to me. (And yes, I understand that POW means the 'compute-rich' decide.)
1. As you said, it was compute-rich before, and native token-rich now. I see it that way: the difference is that your richness is now a part of the protocol which allows it to e.g. punish bad actors (aka slashing) which isn't possible in PoW scenario where attacks can continue indefinitely.
2. Validators don't solely decide rules of execution: full nodes do. If you, as a validator, try to break the rules (double spend, incorrect execution, etc.), full nodes won't accept this new world view and discard it. So providers like Infura which most users (currently) use will continue working as expected and the canonical chain won't be damaged.