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The Merge

ethereum.org

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Re: The Merge

#51

Post by fullsend »

wavefunction wrote: post #36
WFHRenaissance wrote: post #30

Ethereum in its current state is using proof-of-work (PoW) to ensure consensus amongst the thousands of nodes in the network. While PoW is reliable and secure, it is also extremely energy intensive. To produce each block on the network participants are required to use powerful and energy-hungry GPUs to solve a complex mathematical problem. Alternatively, proof-of-stake (PoS) guarantees the security of the network in…

I am sure staking pools will be available to people with less than 32 ETH

They already are. The Merge refers to the fact that the PoS chain has been running parallel to the main chain for one year now. It has been thoroughly tested live and so now will be merged back into the main chain like a branch of a git repo.

Re: The Merge

#52

Post by [deleted] »

jmathai wrote: post #10
y42 wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Quote The Merge will reduce Ethereum's energy consumption by ~99.95%.

Multitudes of miners will no longer race to find the next computationally expensive hash. Proof of Stake does address the energy concerns of crypto.

[deleted]

Re: The Merge

#53

Post by smashem »

jcranmer wrote: post #31
cowtools wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The U.S. dollar is backed by a military many times more energy intensive.

Fiat currency is not backed by military power. Note that there exist several countries without militaries, and none of those countries have worthless currencies. And there have existed countries that put significant investment into their military and still wound up with a worthless currency at the end.

You really believe that the USD, as the world's reserve currency, doesn't require its military to keep it that way.

Re: The Merge

#54

Post by [deleted] »

konschubert wrote: post #45
repomies69 wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Bitcoin is never going to change from PoW... That's the point of the system, Bitcoin is unchangable, unlike Ethereum. But you are free to create your own PoS cryptocurrency. If some PoS system offers the same security features as Bitcoin, people will just switch from Bitcoin to that.

Bitcoin will either die or will eventually have much higher transaction fees compared to Ethereum. Because somebody's gotta pay that power bill. Maybe that won't matter, but I hope it will. https://www.konstantinschubert.com/2018/11/28/proof-of-stake...

[deleted]

Re: The Merge

#55

Post by latchkey »

fizzynut wrote: post #39
hackernudes wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is someone out there buying ETH because of the power that went in to mining it? It's more about supply and demand, I think. The supply of ETH does change after the merge, but from what I understand there will be less generated than before. All the tokens and contracts that use Ethereum will still need to pay gas fees and now instead of miners earning ETH, stakers will.

Those with a "stake" of ETH will be gaining $xxxx of ETH for a cost of $x, so why would you not sell for a giant profit?

Taxes

Re: The Merge

#56

Post by rakoo »

WFHRenaissance wrote: post #30

Ethereum in its current state is using proof-of-work (PoW) to ensure consensus amongst the thousands of nodes in the network. While PoW is reliable and secure, it is also extremely energy intensive. To produce each block on the network participants are required to use powerful and energy-hungry GPUs to solve a complex mathematical problem. Alternatively, proof-of-stake (PoS) guarantees the security of the network in…

Thanks for the explanation! I have a few questions:

- how does the punishment work ? Do all nodes see that a malicious actor changed the chain and write the bad ideas in some ledger meaning "these nodes just lost X ETH" ?

- But if the malicious actor owns 2/3 of validators, what does he care what other nodes do ? They effectively control what block is accepted

- is there an advantage to run more than one validator, if you have the money (EDIT: and you don't want to attack the network)? Basically, does having more money gives you more (power, control, anything) ?

Re: The Merge

#57

Post by datalopers »

fizzynut wrote: post #11

Given that the merge reduces the electricity cost for new Ethereum by ~1000x, won't the price just tank in a race to the bottom?

This seems plausible as the prices historically for both eth and btc have followed the cost to mine. A significant portion of the crypto world is directly propped up by miners in an effort to drum up demand.

Things will change monumentally so it’ll be very interesting to see what does happen.

Re: The Merge

#58

Post by cowtools »

Macha wrote: post #29
cowtools wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The U.S. dollar is backed by a military many times more energy intensive.

So if the us replaced the dollar with Bitcoin they could eliminate or downsize their military? Doubtful

I agree with the point you are making here. I just think that Proof-of-Work is usually a better choice for a cryptocurrency than Proof-of-Stake.

Conventional currencies (notably the US Dollar) are also backed by signifigant military (and thus electrical) power. I would posit that Fiat currencies are nessisary in some sense, but not that they are more efficient to maintain than cryptocurrencies. Cryptocurrencies tend to piggyback on the infrastructure and economy that are built on fiat (e.g. The internet).

Re: The Merge

#59

Post by nightski »

jcranmer wrote: post #49
hapticmonkey wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Does the army and law enforcement not use energy? Do banks not have server farms?

How would moving to cryptocurrency reduce the need of energy for military and law enforcement, or the need for server farms in banks?

I don't think that was the point. The point was that you can't have security without energy expenditure.

Re: The Merge

#60

Post by osigurdson »

wyager wrote: post #6
numlock86 wrote: post #5

> The Merge will reduce Ethereum's energy consumption by ~99.95%. That's something Bitcoin needs ... or even better get rid of it altogether. https://ccaf.io/cbeci/index https://digiconomist.net/bitcoin-energy-consumption/

Proof of work is the only way to get acceptable security properties for a monetary system. Proof of stake suffers from the "nothing at stake" problem, leading to grinding attacks etc.

Good discussion on the topic below (~10 minutes).

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8-_CuPtzoDU

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