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Ethereum Proof-of-Stake

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Re: Ethereum Proof-of-Stake

#51

Post by rglullis »

bibabaloo wrote: post #46
drdrek wrote: post #31

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…

> the more you have of the capital the more you influence the system That's not how PoS works, though?

Do not feed the troll. Flag and move along...

Re: Ethereum Proof-of-Stake

#52

Post by stackedinserter »

dimgl wrote: post #30
Baopab wrote: post #27

Great article, it put an end to many misunderstandings that I had. The technology is truly marvelous.

What's so marvelous about it? Also, how is proof of stake hard to understand? People with a lot of Ethereum are now validators. ???

Name a thing that you consider "marvelous".

Re: Ethereum Proof-of-Stake

#53

Post by ETH_start »

hansword wrote: post #17

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.)

No, the rich and poor get the same ROI, so relative wealth doesn't change.

Re: Ethereum Proof-of-Stake

#54

Post by SilverBirch »

>Let’s walk through a couple theoretical scenarios where a subset of malicious validators wants to censor transactions, say those originating in FATF-blacklisted countries.

Hang on a second. Just to be clear about this example, this example is walking through how Ethereum has been designed specifically to allow North Korea to transact Ethereum, and more than that, prevent anyone who dissents. Like, I mean ok, I get the ideological position in theory of saying "Hey, we're going to design this network so that you can't prevent any transactions." But it's quite different to go "The motivating example of why we would want to do this is so that we can help Iran and North Korea money launder in a direct attack against our own government's laws".

Here's my counter-example to the scenarios the author puts forward. You stake 32 eth to become a validator node and start signing off transactions from North Korea. Other people choose not to do that because... well. Your stake slowly goes up and they slowly bleed Eth. Then the US government smash down your door and throw you in federal prison because you're actively working to help North Korea.

Re: Ethereum Proof-of-Stake

#55

Post by capableweb »

TacticalCoder wrote: post #28
capableweb wrote: post #11

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…

> I think you got my critique right: I find it's folly to stake on general purpose computers.

Validators are not supposed to run on general purpose computers you use for other things, they are supposed to be extra hardened against attacks, as they WILL be targeted. A validator won't be running on the same machine someone does general web development on, where you download random packages over npm for example. If someone does run a validator on a machine where they are randomly trust 3rd party code from a public registry, they have zero sense of security.

If you run them in a hosted server environment, you better trust that environment to be really secure. If you run it at home, you really need to know what you're doing in regards to software, hardware, networking and physical access.

Just like you're not supposed to run production banking infrastructure on home computers, validators are not supposed to run in that environment either.

Re: Ethereum Proof-of-Stake

#56

Post by flatline »

bombcar wrote: post #38
xadhominemx wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Like many decentralized systems, it's not actually decentralized but can have the appearance of such. 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.

The internet is this way. The reality is more about peering agreements and CDNs than a neutral decentralized computer network. But it is still decentralized, just primarily among a few big players.

Re: Ethereum Proof-of-Stake

#57

Post by whatisweb3 »

TacticalCoder wrote: post #42
whatisweb3 wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

> What is the incentive for them to do that? They could be short trading ETH. They could just want to create havoc. Why did people deface websites long before online ransoms were a thing? I don't think bad people need many incentives to do bad things. I may be wrong of course. > 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 plac…

In Eth2 PoS the validator has two keys: signing key, and withdrawal key. They are derived from the same mnemonic seed phrase that can be kept in cold storage. The signing key must be stored on the device doing the staking, but the withdrawal key does not need to be, it is only secured by cold storage.

Re: Ethereum Proof-of-Stake

#58

Post by hprotagonist »

SilverBirch wrote: post #54

>Let’s walk through a couple theoretical scenarios where a subset of malicious validators wants to censor transactions, say those originating in FATF-blacklisted countries. Hang on a second. Just to be clear about this example, this example is walking through how Ethereum has been designed specifically to allow North Korea to transact Ethereum, and more than that, prevent anyone who dissents. Like, I mean ok, I get t…

https://www.bbc.com/news/business-61090064

you don’t even need to go that far!

Re: Ethereum Proof-of-Stake

#59

Post by capableweb »

SilverBirch wrote: post #54

>Let’s walk through a couple theoretical scenarios where a subset of malicious validators wants to censor transactions, say those originating in FATF-blacklisted countries. Hang on a second. Just to be clear about this example, this example is walking through how Ethereum has been designed specifically to allow North Korea to transact Ethereum, and more than that, prevent anyone who dissents. Like, I mean ok, I get t…

Yes, if you actively and knowing break the law, you might get punished for it. Not sure what's new here? If you don't want to connect to North Korea, block connections coming from North Korea, it's like one or two commands of iptables.

Re: Ethereum Proof-of-Stake

#60

Post by jsemrau »

SilverBirch wrote: post #54

>Let’s walk through a couple theoretical scenarios where a subset of malicious validators wants to censor transactions, say those originating in FATF-blacklisted countries. Hang on a second. Just to be clear about this example, this example is walking through how Ethereum has been designed specifically to allow North Korea to transact Ethereum, and more than that, prevent anyone who dissents. Like, I mean ok, I get t…

That is a nutshell is a variant of the Byzantine generals problem. Without a central authority that governs difficult decisions like censorship of nodes NK could launder their crime money through ETH validator nodes. On the other hand of the spectrum you have the Solana/Solend farce where the Solend team just "voted" to take over the wallet of their main customer. It is still a long way.
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