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Ethereum Proof-of-Stake

0xfoobar.substack.com

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191–200 of 338 posts

Re: Ethereum Proof-of-Stake

#191

Post by kobieyc »

rekoil wrote: post #77
gregwebs wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Current Bitcoin usage is literally a rounding error of global energy usage (0.1%) and if wildly successful would still be https://www.lynalden.com/bitcoin-energy/ If Bitcoin moved to PoS it would be fundamentally different. It might work for other coins since they aren't as decentralized. > Instead, proof-of-stake mainly seems less suitable for a decentralized and censorship-resistant global monetary asset, especiall…

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

food waste generates 60x more emissions than Bitcoin, yet nobody is freaking out about that, which makes me think people are just riding the ESG bandwagon

Re: Ethereum Proof-of-Stake

#192

Post by 0xfoobar »

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.

Article author here.

PoS validators have the power to propose new blocks and attest to the chain head. They cannot change the state transition function to allow false payments, just as BTC miners cannot use their block proposal power to mint arbitrary coin amounts.

Re: Ethereum Proof-of-Stake

#193

Post by dragontamer »

0xfoobar wrote: post #192
coffeeblack wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

Article author here. PoS validators have the power to propose new blocks and attest to the chain head. They cannot change the state transition function to allow false payments, just as BTC miners cannot use their block proposal power to mint arbitrary coin amounts.

If it's like BTC, then can't you spend coin, then attest that a different head was the correct chain, thereby undoing the transaction? (Assuming you have enough hashing power / staking power to get people to believe a different head)

Re: Ethereum Proof-of-Stake

#194

Post by ck2 »

I mean it's going to be just absolutely fascinating to see what happens in real life vs all the theories.

I guess if you are heavily invested it's rather dread than intellectual curiosity.

There are plenty of other options if it all goes south.

Re: Ethereum Proof-of-Stake

#195

Post by redox99 »

cowtools wrote: post #186
redox99 wrote: post #182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's the social consensus, or "L0 consensus". It's a fork, so on only on this fork the attackers would lose the ETH. The social consensus means that actual humans, in front of these 2 forks of ETH , the original chain being attacked, and the one where all the attackers stake has been deleted so it's safe (and also non-attackers "richer"), humans would call the latter "Ethereum" and use that. And the former would fa…

Why not just ditch the whole Proof-of-Stake system and use a classical consensus system then?

Because people won't all agree and update their software every 12 seconds for each new block.

Re: Ethereum Proof-of-Stake

#196

Post by operator-name »

cowtools wrote: post #188
operator-name wrote: post #185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, and thus is exactly what happens is 49% of validates start censoring. The legitimacy of the chain exists on the social level and not the protocol level - just as it does with BTC. What's new here is the cost as it forces participants (stakers) to choose a side.

>just as it does with BTC. Reminds me of the (largely failed) bitcoin XT fork. Bitcoiners didn't choose what was right for the network- they chose the easy path in an attempt to prevent fragmentation and keep the price high. I have no reason to expect that ETH users won't do the same, just as they did in the DAO hack fork: they just choose whatever fork happens to profit them in the short-term at the expense of the d…

Doing nothing is still a choice, and will result in their stake being slashed in the non censored "fork". If socially the non censored chain is deemed legitimate, this is a negative outcome that cannot be undone - hence a "commitment".

Without slashing, miners do not have to make any commitments - their funds are duplicated in both chains and they can switch to mining whenever they like.

Re: Ethereum Proof-of-Stake

#197

Post by 0xfoobar »

dragontamer wrote: post #193
0xfoobar wrote: post #192

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Article author here. PoS validators have the power to propose new blocks and attest to the chain head. They cannot change the state transition function to allow false payments, just as BTC miners cannot use their block proposal power to mint arbitrary coin amounts.

If it's like BTC, then can't you spend coin, then attest that a different head was the correct chain, thereby undoing the transaction? (Assuming you have enough hashing power / staking power to get people to believe a different head)

Great question, PoS actually has stronger guarantees against double-spending than PoW does. For PoW you just need to temporarily rent enough hashpower to do a mild reorg.

PoS has a concept called "block finality", where once a block has been marked finalized it cannot be reorged without committing to getting slashed for 1/3 of total staked ether (several billion dollars). Blocks typically get finalized after 6 minutes. This is possible because you can explicitly check whether validators have voted (attested) for two separate blocks at the same chain height.

Re: Ethereum Proof-of-Stake

#198

Post by operator-name »

cowtools wrote: post #186
redox99 wrote: post #182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's the social consensus, or "L0 consensus". It's a fork, so on only on this fork the attackers would lose the ETH. The social consensus means that actual humans, in front of these 2 forks of ETH , the original chain being attacked, and the one where all the attackers stake has been deleted so it's safe (and also non-attackers "richer"), humans would call the latter "Ethereum" and use that. And the former would fa…

Why not just ditch the whole Proof-of-Stake system and use a classical consensus system then?

Sybil attacks caused by the nothing at stake problem.

Re: Ethereum Proof-of-Stake

#199

Post by ahnick »

cowtools wrote: post #178
rekoil wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

I disagree. If you can design a PoW system where the distinguishing factor between profitable mining and unprofitable mining is the depreciation of generic hardware, then the public will generally have control over the network so long as the public owns most of the world's generic computing power as opposed to some special interest group like ASIC miners.

This is exactly what Chia (https://www.chia.net) has done by using hard drive storage space to hold the proofs. This allows the generic hardware of general purpose computers with hard drives to operate profitable and energy efficient full nodes on the network. Especially if these are existing machines people already own. Also, the computing infrastructure needed to farm (mine) the plot files (files holding the proofs) is minimal enough that it can be run from a Raspberry Pi.

Re: Ethereum Proof-of-Stake

#200

Post by formerkrogemp »

olalonde wrote: post #139
WJW wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The sanctions go a little bit further than that though. Financial institutions are not merely blocked from accepting transactions from the IP region of North Korea, but actually from doing business with a whole list of companies and individuals with ties to NK. To comply with the sanctions regulation you would need to have a lookup service listing the owner of every wallet and for every transaction you validate, chec…

It was actually ruled in 2014 that virtual currency miners are not money transmitters[0]. [0] https://www.fincen.gov/sites/default/files/news_release/2014...

Regulations can and do change. Cryptocurrency fanatics are expanding their regulatory capture with various senators and state governments friendly to the 'movement.' I worry about the next crypto crash tanking the economy after this crypto crash.
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