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Ethereum Proof-of-Stake

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121–130 of 338 posts

Re: Ethereum Proof-of-Stake

#121
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…

"machine enforced plutocratic system where early adopters and syndicates have absolute power"

Also applies to, e.g. USD spent on amazon, casting votes in bipartisan elections, paying taxes, etc.

It is a fundamental aspect of modern capitalist organization of wealth. It is worth assessing the rate at which it is being concentrated, which for USD is a historically unprecedented rate.

Re: Ethereum Proof-of-Stake

#122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Eh, no. Helping North Korea to bypass international agreements won't help us to "reject violence and authority." What authority are you talking about here specifically, what are you trying to reject? Throwing an existing system out of the window without offering anything in return is madness. Cryptocurrency won't replace all the financial and government systems that have been developed internationally for years. How…

Is there a peer to peer way to stop nuclear proliferation?

One could argue that the current way to stop nuclear proliferation is "peer to peer"—after all, the peers of would-be nuclear nations are other nations!

(But that's obviously not what you meant...)

Re: Ethereum Proof-of-Stake

#123
post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I absolutely agree we should build infrastructure that allows people within oppressive regimes options with which they can resist, escape and co-ordinate. Which is why this infrastructure, which is clearly designed to empower those regimes, is bad. Are North Koreans using crypto-currencies? Maybe, it doesn't seem like it. Is the North Korean regime using crypto-currencies? Absolutely, we repeatedly see the North Kore…

Once you understand that your regime *is* the oppressive regime, you'd understand why this is necessary.

Hi, I am Russian.

To really help ordinary people in oppressed countries, the first step is to implement policies such that they only affect those who should be affected.

If you do that, cryptocurrency benefits become moot: a Russian freelancer working overseas can legally TransferWise money to help her mom, but a Putin-connected oligarch can't wire money to help the regime.

For many reasons, it's difficult: e.g., how do you verify that your Russian user does not in fact work for Gazprom? Much safer to implement a total ban on anyone connecting from a Russian IP or using a Russian bank, explicitly sanctioned or not.

However, blanket financial anonymity at scale is not an acceptable workaround. Making it simpler for kleptocrats in charge to finance questionable activities and launder money obtained through thievery and violence, it introduces more problems than it solves, and in fact props up the regime.

Re: Ethereum Proof-of-Stake

#124

>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…

Did you just assume that Etherium is American?

It's not about whether Ethereum is American, it's about whether Americans can use Ethereum, or in fact the citizen of any western democracy, they pretty much all have harsh sanctions against NK and Iran. The list of countries that sign up to the FATF list the author was talking about includes the whole of the G20 plus several other countries.

Also, for reference I'm not American.

Re: Ethereum Proof-of-Stake

#125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

What I'm saying here is that this system is designed to tax your staked ETH if you do that. So you have three choices: 1: Run a validator blocking NK transactions, safe in the knowledge it's probably legal, but your staked ETH is slowly going to taxed by the network costing you money. 2: Run a validator including the NK transactions, your staked ETH is safe, but you are violating your countries money laundering laws…

Sounds like the conclusion of your #3 also applies to #2...

Re: Ethereum Proof-of-Stake

#126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Eh, no. Helping North Korea to bypass international agreements won't help us to "reject violence and authority." What authority are you talking about here specifically, what are you trying to reject? Throwing an existing system out of the window without offering anything in return is madness. Cryptocurrency won't replace all the financial and government systems that have been developed internationally for years. How…

Is there a peer to peer way to stop nuclear proliferation?

Peer conflict!

Re: Ethereum Proof-of-Stake

#127
post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Proof of Work is the same, just with more steps.

That's weird, it's almost like the basic premise of cryptocurrency was flawed from the beginning.

Wait, you are saying that people with more capital have more power under capitalism?

Re: Ethereum Proof-of-Stake

#128
post #3

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…

All popular Ethereum clients are open-source.

If you really want to know how it works, go read the code.

Re: Ethereum Proof-of-Stake

#129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Bitcoin uses less energy than Gold Mining and the Banking System https://twitter.com/topimp21/status/1542863870552936448 "Bitcoin uses 2-56 times less energy than the fiat system" https://bitcoinmagazine.com/culture/bitcoin-environmental-de...

It also processes several orders of magnitude less transactions, and does so much slower (and at a higher cost). Please stop posting misleading claims.

What I posted isn't mutually exclusive with the parent comment.

The lightning network on top of Bitcoin scales the number of transactions.

Please stop placing claims where I didn't make any.

Re: Ethereum Proof-of-Stake

#130

>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…

You should understand that this is a very USA centred opinion. There’s a whole big world of different cultures and politics, and it is possible to believe there are other approaches where we reject violence and authority. It’s the usual “you’re helping drug dealers/terrorists/North Korea, but what about the children?!” state simping that ignores the violence of the existing systems, and ignores the billions of people…

It is not in any sense a USA-centered opinion. Look at the list of countries and supra-national organizations which have comprehensive sanctions in place against North Korea: which include not only the US, but Japan, the European Union, Australia and Taiwan.

You can adopt whatever degree of moral relativism suits your purpose, but there's basically not a lot of people anywhere in the world who are looking at what's happening in North Korea and saying "looks good to me".

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