The Merge • Hacker News Board

Re: The Merge

#91

Post by samkon » Sat, Aug 20, 2022, 10:25 PM UTC

sktrdie wrote: post #37

I don't get proof of stake. What's stopping anyone from presenting a new chain made up of thousands of fake transactions? And why wouldn't such chain be accepted by the network? Is it just "checkpoints" hardcoded in the software that don't allow this?

Any node that did this would have their stake slashed by the rest of the network, because it would be easy to prove that the chain was invalid. The network finalizes the blocks that are added to the chain, there are no deep chain reorgs like in bitcoin - so any significant alternate history is easily identified.

Re: The Merge

#92

Post by alfiedotwtf » Sat, Aug 20, 2022, 10:25 PM UTC

jcranmer wrote: post #72

smashem wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Yes, I do, actually. The US economy is the world's largest economy in gross value, is the largest or one of the largest trade partners of much of the world, and has very limited policies on capital control or other monetary restrictions. This means that there is going to be more depth on trading pairs via USD and even small currencies than you would likely have with other countries, you would have very little counter…

> Magically blinking away the US military would not change any of the above consideration one iota.

Let's flip the question around: what happens when oil producing countries try to sell in non-USD? US military has entered the chat

Re: The Merge

#93

Post by samkon » Sat, Aug 20, 2022, 10:29 PM UTC

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?

Securing private keys is much cheaper than securing physical property.

Re: The Merge

#94

Post by latchkey » Sat, Aug 20, 2022, 10:29 PM UTC

bluquark wrote: post #90

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 ecos…

It is order of magnitude easier for them to make changes after launch since the code and developers are here on earth and not floating in space.

Re: The Merge

#95

Post by clord » Sat, Aug 20, 2022, 10:30 PM UTC

Say I have a few GPUs churning but my payout date is late 2022. Should I just give up now?

Re: The Merge

#96

Post by jcranmer » Sat, Aug 20, 2022, 10:31 PM UTC

alfiedotwtf wrote: post #92

jcranmer wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, I do, actually. The US economy is the world's largest economy in gross value, is the largest or one of the largest trade partners of much of the world, and has very limited policies on capital control or other monetary restrictions. This means that there is going to be more depth on trading pairs via USD and even small currencies than you would likely have with other countries, you would have very little counter…

> Magically blinking away the US military would not change any of the above consideration one iota. Let's flip the question around: what happens when oil producing countries try to sell in non-USD? US military has entered the chat

Answer: nothing. No country has been invaded by the US military, or any other military for that matter, after selling, or even attempting to sell, oil in non-USD. Not Russia, not Iran, not Venezuela, not Iraq, not Libya, none of them.

(And I include the last few because there's no evidence they even attempted to sell oil in non-US currencies.)

Re: The Merge

#97

Post by yunohn » Sat, Aug 20, 2022, 10:32 PM UTC

entrep wrote: post #88

rakoo wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Sure, but that wasn’t the question. How does the punishment play out, assuming they’re acting in bad faith?

Re: The Merge

#98

Post by uncletammy » Sat, Aug 20, 2022, 10:33 PM UTC

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…

Care to objectively articulate the arguments against switching to proof-of-stake? Why is it controversial?

Re: The Merge

#99

Post by falcolas » Sat, Aug 20, 2022, 10:34 PM UTC

entrep wrote: post #88

rakoo wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

What reason would anyone have to believe in their benevolence? It would be safer to believe in and use their greed and self preservation.

Re: The Merge

#100

Post by Banana699 » Sat, Aug 20, 2022, 10:37 PM UTC

mondoveneziano wrote: post #82

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 numb…

This is a lot of words to say that PoW involves an inverse-hash problem being solved. Inverse-hash is a mathematical problem. Finding the nonce is solving it.