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The Merge

ethereum.org

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Re: The Merge

#81

Post by cowtools »

TakeBlaster16 wrote: post #20
falcolas wrote: post #2

Poor miners. /s

I can't tell you how much I enjoy refreshing these crypto threads. Comments are turning from black to gray to black again like I'm at a disco.

Something I like about HN is that down-voted posts will often come back from the grave. For some reason voters have a lot of sympathy.

Back on reddit, people use votes as a way to signal to each other what to believe in: instinctively, you upvote popular comments and downvote unpopular comments. It's really the first few voters that decide what people see.

Re: The Merge

#82

Post by mondoveneziano »

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…

> required to use powerful and energy-hungry GPUs to solve a complex mathematical problem.

No mathematical problem is getting "solved".

It is much more akin to playing the lottery: Entirely random numbers are being tried out, by sending them through an energy-intensive algorithm (being energy-intensive is the algorithm's only purpose in proof-of-work), until what comes out is less than another number. That other number is chosen according to the desired "difficulty", it has no significance beyond that.

The algorithm is literally meant to spend energy, i.e. the outcome of the computation has no meaning by itself. This also means that proof-of-work cryptocurrencies actively counteract any advances to make the computation more efficient: The "difficulty" will just be adjusted up until the efficiency gain is canceled out. Proof-of-work cryptocurrencies are inefficient by design.

Re: The Merge

#83

Post by icoder »

dragontamer wrote: post #68
paulpauper wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's something Bitcoin needs ... or even better get rid of it altogether. As the price keeps falling, presumably so will energy consumption. The energy consumption problem fixes itself as the bubble bursts and people lose interest and mining becomes unprofitable, without the need for regulation.

The hardware to perform PoW already exists. All someone needs to do for a 51% attack is buy up the old mining hardware that is being sold for so cheap. Every "bust" period for BTC comes with the risk of a 51% attack / centralization. If the difficulty falls by 90% because 90% of miners were shut off, you only need to buy 5.6% of those thrown-away miners to cause a 51% attack on BTC.

Assuminge no one buys up any of the other 94.4%

Re: The Merge

#84

Post by dragontamer »

icoder wrote: post #83
dragontamer wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The hardware to perform PoW already exists. All someone needs to do for a 51% attack is buy up the old mining hardware that is being sold for so cheap. Every "bust" period for BTC comes with the risk of a 51% attack / centralization. If the difficulty falls by 90% because 90% of miners were shut off, you only need to buy 5.6% of those thrown-away miners to cause a 51% attack on BTC.

Assuminge no one buys up any of the other 94.4%

It doesn't matter if they buy it or not. If they're waiting for profitability, they won't turn those machines on. Or do you think people will spend $100 on electricity to mine $10 of BTC just to keep the security of the token high?

A hypothetical 51% attacker isn't doing it for profits, they're doing it for some other reason. Whatever that reason is, the 51% attack gets cheaper-and-cheaper each time these "bust" cycles happen.

Re: The Merge

#85

Post by novantadue »

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

We wouldn't have to overthrow mid-east dictators every time they threaten to price oil in Euros -- but obviously this wouldn't help much because we'd still need to maintain superpower status or risk losing the world order.

Re: The Merge

#86

Post by [deleted] »

X6S1x6Okd1st wrote: post #73
Tao3300 wrote: post #61

> As we approach The Merge of Ethereum Mainnet, you should be on high alert for scams trying to take advantage of users during this transition. Do not send your ETH anywhere in an attempt to "upgrade to ETH2." There is no "ETH2" token, and there is nothing more you need to do for your funds to remain safe. Yeah... this is going to be a shitshow. Who wants to set the over/under on $millions that get stolen? Which exch…

> Who wants to set the over/under on $millions that get stolen? If you can think of a way to measure it metaculus would be interested properly. > Which exchange or fund will lose a vast chunk of its holdings? I'd place this at roughly at 0.01% chance for any major exchange or fund

[deleted]

Re: The Merge

#87

Post by dsimmons »

ur-whale wrote: post #66

Time to short NVidia

In the short-term, it's likely already priced in: folks have known this is coming for a while, and especially over the past 2-3 months where it became "real" versus "coming soon".

Longer term, there may be uses for GPUs when it comes to zero-knowledge proofs (think: expensive to produce, easy to verify), but we still have a ways to go in that department.

Re: The Merge

#88

Post by entrep »

rakoo wrote: post #56
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, i…

> - 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

As I understand it, anyone who owns that amount of ETH would probably be interested in contributing to the trust of the Ethereum blockchain.

Re: The Merge

#89

Post by mcmeowerson »

p4bl0 wrote: post #70
fullsend wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

How can two chains be merged if one is a fork of the other without having instances of double spending? With source code in Git you can manually pick which version of each line you want in the merged result, but here it's not possible to do that if services or merch have been exchanged with coins. Except if you're fine with having to deal forever with coins and merged-from-the-fork coins on the eth blockchain?

As far as I understand it both forks have the same ledger, its only the transaction validation method thats changing. The PoS fork is mirroring all of the PoW transactions so no double spending or extra coins.

Re: The Merge

#90

Post by bluquark »

This reminds me of the nerve-biting period up to the James Webb launch. The devs put off this transition for so many years trying to plan for every contingency, but we still can't be certain they didn't miss a crucial flaw.

In a system where the only thing holding back malicious actors is technical constraints, it only takes one bug or one misaligned incentive for a vicious cycle to take down the entire Ethereum ecosystem. An exploitable detail in the PRNG used to select the validators, for instance.

And like a space telescope, there is no opportunity to realistically experiment with the change beforehand, nor an easy way to make adjustments after launch.

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