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

231–240 of 338 posts

Re: Ethereum Proof-of-Stake

#231

Post by didericis »

haxiomic wrote: post #187
didericis wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Trust is a feature. Transparent systems in which transactions are screened do not trust their people . North Korea would never allow their people access to a truly private cryptocurrency (which Monero does better). It would become easier to funnel money internally and create opposing factions. This discussion is no different than a discussion about just rulers. If the person in charge of a monetary system has good in…

It’s an appealing idea and what attracts so many bright minds to crypto. People voting with their money for their interests or the interests of the group. Love it. But that’s not how this dynamical system plays out. It would perhaps stand a chance if players could make transaction decisions based on information about the other party but that just isn’t the case in practise. Bad actors have had no issue obscuring sour…

Well said, agree with all of that. I have hope for systems that allow for the easy, anonymous (to outside observers, at least) build up of networks for the kind of information exchange you rightly claim to be the most important aspect of creating good systems in practice.

It doesn’t solve that information bottleneck problem, but I think the more efficient structures that lead to transactional bottlenecks and are necessary in things like Bitcoin are technical problems that can and I think have been worked out in currencies like Monero. Monero has quite successfully resisted the same pulls to centralization that Bitcoin and Ethereum have succumbed to for the sake of efficiency. It is smaller, but still quite large.

That does not necessarily mean it is good, and while I’m optimistic, I understand where the caution comes from. At the very least it’s extremely interesting, both from a technical perspective and a social/political perspective.

At the end of the day I am more and more convinced that all of this money and power stuff is downstream of relationships, culture, and ability to communicate and cooperate across differences. That’s what’s really important, and can be either encouraged or discouraged to move in a direction that helps the most people with all kinds of different tools, of which money is just one, and which could happen all kinds of different ways in different systems.

I wish it were easier to know what helps and what doesn’t so we wouldn’t risk making things worse. But I think the only way to know is to experiment.

Re: Ethereum Proof-of-Stake

#232

Post by aaaaaaaaata »

programmarchy wrote: post #80
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…

Just to play devil’s advocate, is a server responding to a ping request also actively helping North Korea?

Most compelling comment in this sub-thread.

Re: Ethereum Proof-of-Stake

#233

Post by aaaaaaaaata »

RL_Quine wrote: post #3
YetAnotherNick wrote: post #2

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…

Spoken like somebody who doesn't read Buterin.

Re: Ethereum Proof-of-Stake

#234

Post by whatisweb3 »

olalonde wrote: post #174
RL_Quine wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

That doesn't work, unless 100% of miners accept your rule change forever (aka impossible). It would only take a single miner to keep mining using the old rules and this miner would reap the block reward / transaction fees. An old Bitcoin client would follow the chain created by this miner, wouldn't it?

Yep - users have to actively decide to use a new Bitcoin client. Users who are against PoS would just not upgrade to the new client, or would fork it.

Re: Ethereum Proof-of-Stake

#235

Post by jayd16 »

_81ih wrote: post #151
SilverBirch wrote: post #101

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…

I really don't get what the argument is here? NK and others also use Tor, Signal (Protocol), and more. Are they all bad? And why always use the most extreme examples like NK and China? If US citizens could empathize with people not only from NK, but also from places like Turkey, where the value of our currency has been demolished under the current authoritarian government (and, IMO, they aren't far away from putting…

"Bad tool is used by bad guys so don't support it" doesn't imply "any tool used by bad guys is bad." It's perfectly valid to think that different tech has different value based on specific pros and cons.

Re: Ethereum Proof-of-Stake

#236

Post by Meltion »

clippablematt wrote: post #68
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…

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…

I'm a software engineer not a military expert with access to secret information.

My country also takes part in blocking north Korea and I life in a democracy.

It's my duty to not work against it.

Re: Ethereum Proof-of-Stake

#237

Post by jayd16 »

didericis wrote: post #145
haxiomic wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Turns out North Korea are using crypto! To fund missile programs https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-60281129.amp The more I think on these things, the more I think trust is a feature, not a bug

Trust is a feature. Transparent systems in which transactions are screened do not trust their people . North Korea would never allow their people access to a truly private cryptocurrency (which Monero does better). It would become easier to funnel money internally and create opposing factions. This discussion is no different than a discussion about just rulers. If the person in charge of a monetary system has good in…

>the free decisions of the collective

... the collective of an elite group of for-profit corporations that in no way reflects the will of a significant group of people.

Re: Ethereum Proof-of-Stake

#238

Post by [deleted] »

whatisweb3 wrote: post #234
olalonde wrote: post #174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That doesn't work, unless 100% of miners accept your rule change forever (aka impossible). It would only take a single miner to keep mining using the old rules and this miner would reap the block reward / transaction fees. An old Bitcoin client would follow the chain created by this miner, wouldn't it?

Yep - users have to actively decide to use a new Bitcoin client. Users who are against PoS would just not upgrade to the new client, or would fork it.

[deleted]

Re: Ethereum Proof-of-Stake

#239

Post by unity1001 »

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…

People in China, Russia, India will do that. And nobody from the US will be able to break down their door. The world does not revolve around the US.

Re: Ethereum Proof-of-Stake

#240

Post by unity1001 »

haxiomic wrote: post #107
SilverBirch wrote: post #101

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…

Turns out North Korea are using crypto! To fund missile programs https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-60281129.amp The more I think on these things, the more I think trust is a feature, not a bug

Yep. Trust is a feature, not a bug. So that the 'legitimate and righteous' blockade of North Korea by the Angloamerican establishment could turn on its domestic dissent whenever needed. As we saw during the Occupy protests in 2011.
Post reply on HN