Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Ethereum Proof-of-Stake

0xfoobar.substack.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

161–170 of 338 posts

Re: Ethereum Proof-of-Stake

#161

Post by zionic »

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…

HN is so crypto-phobic it’s almost impossible to have a comment section without bad-faith arguments like this.

It’s a censorship-resistant technology, of course that applies to both good and bad guys. You know that, yet here you are making this absurd argument and the top-voted post.

sigh

Re: Ethereum Proof-of-Stake

#162

Post by redox99 »

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…

This is no different than good ole Proof of Work (bitcoin, current eth, etc). A miner already decides what transactions to include in their block, and also their parent block.

Bitcoin has been working like this for 13 years. And your hypothetical situation hasn't happened.

Re: Ethereum Proof-of-Stake

#163

Post by cowtools »

coffeeblack wrote: post #155
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? You can influence the payment processing. And if the crypto would allow false payments, it’s value would immediately drop to zero. The more money you have invested, the higher your incentive to keep it’s value stable.

keep the value stable or keep the value high? two very different things; For example I'd argue Bitcoin's high L1 transaction fees keep the value unstable, but higher.

It is not obvious to me that an agent with higher investment should be allowed to notarize the payments. The system should generally work for the benefit of the users, not the HODLers, developers, miners, stakers or any other special interest group.

P.S. I think PoS is a major downgrade in decentralization. At that point, you might as well just use classical consensus: it's more secure as your relationships with notaries are explicitly established as opposed to choosing whoever happens to have the most coins.

Re: Ethereum Proof-of-Stake

#164

Post by latchkey »

xadhominemx wrote: post #35
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…

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

Very large ETH miner here. It is less challenging than you think. I'm not saying it is easy, but it is definitely doable with the right team of people.

Re: Ethereum Proof-of-Stake

#165

Post by 0xfoobar »

Barrera wrote: post #64

The article does not even mention long range attacks in which large portions of the block chain are rewritten. This is made extremely hard in Bitcoin through proof-of-work. To rewrite history you must re-do all of the work, which means you burn enough real-world energy to work faster than the entire rest of the network (aka majority hash rate attack). It's allowed, but expensive. In PoS, there was never any work, so…

Article author here.

Supermajority attestations and block finalization, as well as withdrawal queues, prevent long-range attacks. To attempt to reorg a finalized block (blocks are generally finalized after 6 minutes) you have to commit to losing 1/3 of total staked ether, currently several billion dollars.

The only participants who can equivocate (vote for two blocks at the same height) are active validators so there is significant economic value at risk to pursue such an attack.

Re: Ethereum Proof-of-Stake

#166

Post by RL_Quine »

olalonde wrote: post #153
RL_Quine wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nobody would be mining OldChain so it's difficulty would be irrelevantly close to zero, you'd just just drop the requirement for POW down to something effectively gone. I said it's contrived as anything, but it's all technically possible if you mess with the incentives and intentionally create really perverse systems. That's the messiest of them though, changing the transaction format, script language, issuing new co…

> Nobody would be mining OldChain so it's difficulty would be irrelevantly close to zero, you'd just just drop the requirement for POW down to something effectively gone. Why would nobody be mining OldChain? You can't remove the block reward or change the difficulty without a hard fork. PoW miners would still decide which blocks are mined and reap the rewards (block reward and transaction fees). You haven't actually…

You can remove the block reward as a soft fork, the consensus rule for Bitcoin and its derivatives is a maximum. Even if it wasn't, you can soft fork in a rule that the block reward should be spent to somewhere invalid, or paid to a particular person.

Re: Ethereum Proof-of-Stake

#167

Post by AlexandrB »

100001_100011 wrote: post #108
rekoil wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

1% of ALL energy generated just to operate a part of the world economy is a massive amount though...

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...

Gold mining? What does gold mining have to do with the financial system in 2022? It's funny how Bitcoin's "goldbug" roots crop up from time to time in these discussions.

Re: Ethereum Proof-of-Stake

#168

Post by AlexandrB »

ETH_start wrote: post #53
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.

Reminds me of:

> ‘The law, in its majestic equality, forbids the rich as well as the poor to sleep under bridges, to beg in the streets, and to steal bread.’

Relative wealth changes because both parties need to eat and, assuming ETH becomes a usable currency, the poor will have to take a larger relative portion of their staked ETH and spend it to buy food.

Edit: Though, to be clear, this is hardly Ethereum's fault.

Re: Ethereum Proof-of-Stake

#169

Post by 0xfoobar »

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…

Article author here.

The tradeoffs between centralized control and permissionless primitives are better explored elsewhere, but the dangerously high costs of depending on a fickle intermediary for all transactions should be clear to any informed observer.

Consider a Russian citizen unable to flee Putin's wartorn regime because all personal life savings and assets have been frozen.

Just as private communications make some tradeoffs for not acquiescing to the surveillance state, so permissionless value transfer makes tradeoffs.

Also recommend a thread writeup on the importance of privacy I put together: https://twitter.com/0xfoobar/status/1502083084052836354

Re: Ethereum Proof-of-Stake

#170

Post by cowtools »

rglullis wrote: post #136
hellcow wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That “bad behavior” is precisely what the above poster meant by “changing the rules of the system.” If you or a syndicate have a large enough stake, you can manipulate the transactions which occur.

"By large enough", you mean 67% to attempt to do it with some chance of success, and if it fails it gets slashed. Not to mention that no one would be interested in using any network where this level of centralization could pose a real threat, and the most likely outcome of such a scenario would be a loss of the value of the native token.

...but if it succeeds, then everyone else gets slashed. The network has no concept of "truth". PoS doesn't fix this, it just puts all your eggs in one basket.

Who would be interested in using any network which exists only for the profit of the existing stakeholders? Why not just fork it?

Post reply on HN