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The Merge

ethereum.org

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Re: The Merge

#141

Post by osigurdson »

Banana699 wrote: post #100
mondoveneziano wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

Here is how I explain it to people:

Imagine a page of a book, for each letter a-z, assign a number to it (a=1, b=2, .. , z=26). Compute the sum of all of the letters on the page but reset back to zero when 100 is reached (i.e. 97 + 5 = 2). The resulting number is a kind of signature for the page. Changing a letter would result in a different sum.

At this point, people usually understand the utility and irreversible nature of it but quickly realize that many pages could have the resulting signature. It is a fairly easy leap of faith for most people to accept that there could be much more sophisticated algorithms that 1) use a bigger number for the signature and 2) take position into account and 3) result in very different signatures with tiny changes in input. This is usually sufficient for anyone to understand what is meant by a hash.

Finally explain that the hash must have a certain pattern to it (like end in a zero for example). If the hash of our "page" does not have this pattern, add another small gibberish word to the end and try it again. Keep trying until a hash with the expected pattern is found (and there is your Bitcoin).

The suggestion that a mathematical problem is being solved (while not completely inaccurate) sounds a bit more elegant in my opinion than what is really going on. It is really more like guessing (not that it really matters).

Re: The Merge

#142

Post by etaioinshrdlu »

repomies69 wrote: post #9
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/

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.

What about bitcoin makes it unchangeable other than the culture of the people who run it? Culture can be subject to change.

Re: The Merge

#143

Post by T0Bi »

fizzynut wrote: post #67
whatshisface wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The supply of ETH is only related to electricity when it's possible to mine it with electricity. Otherwise, what keeps the price of crypto up is people competing to get currency for uses like remittance. Since sending money to another country using a cryptocurrency ties up an amount of currency for a period of time, users have to compete for the available tokens in order to exchange with them.

That's my point though, after the merge the proof of stake nodes are earning a lot of ETH for a fraction of the previous cost, the only way price should stay stable is if everyone with a stake agrees not to undercut each other.

The rewards are decreasing as well. Issuance is reduced by 90% from currently ~13k ETH/Day to 1600 ETH /Day.

Re: The Merge

#144

Post by stepanhruda »

ww520 wrote: post #127
entrep wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> - 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.

Fund can be borrowed. As attested in last the couple months, billions of funds were borrowed to bet on the market one way or the other. Borrowing a billion dollars to subvert the network for a short duration sounds like a feasible strategy.

You can’t borrow enough money and immediately take over the network. Those funds need to be staked first in validators with 32 ETH each and you need to control enough validators to control consensus. It’s more difficult than PoW in a way since you can’t just start validating, there is an entry/exit queue.

Re: The Merge

#145

Post by T0Bi »

encryptluks2 wrote: post #116
dsimmons wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Gas fees don't materially change under Proof of Stake. It's a common misconception that The Merge reduces fees (it does not).

So what is the point of high fees under proof of stake? Before it was to reward the miners. Who exactly is being rewarded high fees once it changes and for what purpose? If the costs to run a validator are too expensive or need too many resources then you just end up promoting a centralized solution.

The point of fees isn't primarily to reward the miners. That's what the block reward is for. Under PoS validators will still get a block reward, although a lower one (90% less).

The fees are to mitigate spam attacks. You can only fit that many transactions in a block. Fees are bids to be included in a block. The higher the fee, the earlier your transaction gets included. Fees on Ethereum are high, because a lot of people want to use it.

Re: The Merge

#146

Post by rvz »

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…

One question:

How is Ethereum going to comply with looming regulations in the cryptocurrency industry with proof-of-stake when regulators and enforcement agencies such as the OFAC could instruct validators to not mine or process transactions that have come from Ethereum mixers like Tornado.cash or sanctioned addresses and stay as a permissionless network at the same time?

If they do comply and enough validators start censoring these transactions, then it no longer is a permissionless network and just censors transactions like any other permissioned network does. If not enough validators censor or comply with these regulations, the funds in those validators will be slashed and may cause a cascade of lost funds and will also allow the processing of transactions from sanctioned addresses. i.e non-compliance and angering the regulators.

The energy problem is most definitely solved. But from a regulatory point of view, it appears that the Merge will introduce another can of worms and will make Ethereum eventually a more permissioned network with proof-of-stake.

Re: The Merge

#147

Post by papa-whisky »

6c737133 wrote: post #106
whoooooo123 wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's bullshit: https://yanmaani.github.io/proof-of-stake-is-a-scam-and-the-...

A magnificently misinformed waste of bytes. Thanks for sharing.

I can't tell if "waste of bytes" is referring to the blog post shared by GP, or to proof of stake as a whole.

If the former; as someone with little knowledge of cryptocurrency the post read fairly convincingly to me. In what ways is it misinformed?

Re: The Merge

#148

Post by elif »

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?

ETH 'on the beacon chain' today is locked in a contract.

Re: The Merge

#149

Post by Banana699 »

pavlov wrote: post #120
khazhoux wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Layman’s explanation: POW works by solving a complex mathematical problem. :-)

It’s not the layman’s explanation because the average person doesn’t encounter mathematical problems being solved by a brute force lottery. In high school math, problems are solved by choosing the right formula and plugging in the right variables. Throwing the dice trillions of times isn’t what people imagine when they hear “solving a complex mathematical problem.” That framing is designed to make PoW more acceptable…

Any person who thinks that a computer is going through symbolic formulas and selecting which one to substitute in to find a hash function nonce doesn't know a whole lot about what a blockchain fundamentally is and how computers make it possible. That's either the fault of the explanation they read\are reading (if it was falsely advertised) or the fault of the person (if they're biting on explanations beyond their level) or nobody's fault really because somewhat-hard concepts are somewhat-hard.

Any explanation of PoW worth its salt no matter how basic should - and does in my experience - repeatedly drive home the idea that PoW is inefficient, it's literally right there in the name, Proof of Work, jumping through hoops as an algorithm. If somebody doesn't understand that PoW is extraordinarily inefficient, they don't understand blockchains and why they are cryptographically secure modulo implementations and social engineering.

Nothing new is added or said by emphasising how inefficient PoW is, that's the entire point, that's why it's secure. The comment that started this chain basically said that in very simple terms, and the comment I replied to expressed disapproval about a very minor issue with the terms then re-said what its parent already said in more words that don't add any clarity.

Will people see 'mathematical' and assume the computer is integrating dy/dx by parts to get the next nonce ? You can assume that the average HN reader knows that when we say a computer is 'solving math' it's meant that it's crunching an aweful lot of binary strings. That's why we call classic AI "classic" or "symbolic". Everything a computer do is crunching numbers brute-force style except when said otherwise.

Re: The Merge

#150

Post by seibelj »

latchkey wrote: post #47
zaptrem wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you give more info about Zero Knowledge Proofs would require ASICS?

https://vitalik.eth.limo/general/2022/08/04/zkevm.html "Type 1 aims to replicate Ethereum exactly, and so it has no way of mitigating these inefficiencies. At present, proofs for Ethereum blocks take many hours to produce. This can be mitigated either by clever engineering to massively parallelize the prover or in the longer term by ZK-SNARK ASICs." ... "Personally, my hope is that everything becomes Type 1 over time…

That doesn’t mean we need more power. It just means the requirements of ZK proofs may need specialized equipment to process them efficiently. Different problem.
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