Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

The Merge

ethereum.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

161–170 of 414 posts

Re: The Merge

#161

Post by miohtama »

rvz wrote: post #146
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…

Validator can only decide transactions for its own block. This is the same as a miner currently.

- Some US based miners are already not including Tornado Cash transactions in their block

- These transactions are included in the blocks mined by the other miners

- Base layer censorship is not likely, because there have sanctioned Bitcoin and Ethereum addresses since 2018

- Getting the required 2/3 validators on the board might be difficult, becaused there is a huge backslash from the community against this and this could lead to another TheDAO hard fork like event and just having your validators slashed by the users / DoS etc.

The base layer neutrality make senses. Web browsers don’t censor the DNS addresses you can access either.

Re: The Merge

#162

Post by colinmhayes »

bitL wrote: post #158

OK, so you stake 32ETH, buy a dedicated server for a validator, and you'd get up to 5% reward per year. How is that going to pay off your dedicated server? Moreover, you are risking losing those 32ETH in case your validator goes down. Your payment would be proportional to the number of attestations, so if only a few people use ETH for transactions, your reward will be low. Did anyone think about making staking actual…

The reward goes up as the number of validators goes down.

Re: The Merge

#163

Post by miohtama »

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

I have been using Stakewise.io that is 1) somewhat decentralised 2) gives liquididy for your stake and ability to sell it (instead of waiting for the exit / pause which is not yet supported by the protocol)

https://stakewise.io/

Note that the current Ethereum consensus protocol does not support 100% decentralised staking pools yet.

Re: The Merge

#164

Post by fizzynut »

hackernudes wrote: post #132
fizzynut wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

I don't understand what you mean. Stakers get ETH "for free" and therefore they crash the price? But the demand for ETH will still be there just like it was for mining. I don't really understand how Ethereum works very well. They are trying to tweak the ETH generation to make the merge work (see the ultra sound money memes). Just because stakers don't have to work hard doesn't mean ETH will crash. The whole thing doe…

Ok, a real life comparison, lets say there are 1000s of real life mines around the world that currently mine gold for say $50 per gram, but suddenly a processing technique lowers that cost for all miners to $0.50 per gram. In any normal market the price of gold should trend down.

Re: The Merge

#165

Post by wmf »

bitL wrote: post #158

OK, so you stake 32ETH, buy a dedicated server for a validator, and you'd get up to 5% reward per year. How is that going to pay off your dedicated server? Moreover, you are risking losing those 32ETH in case your validator goes down. Your payment would be proportional to the number of attestations, so if only a few people use ETH for transactions, your reward will be low. Did anyone think about making staking actual…

These criticisms seem to all be based on theory with no reference to the existing Ethereum ecosystem.

How is that going to pay off your dedicated server?

5% of 32 ETH is currently $2,500 which easily pays for a computer.

Moreover, you are risking losing those 32ETH in case your validator goes down.

You have to be down for months to lose your stake.

Your payment would be proportional to the number of attestations, so if only a few people use ETH for transactions, your reward will be low.

I'm pretty sure that validators produce blocks regardless of how many transactions there are. Ethereum's problem is too many transactions, not too few.

Did anyone think about making staking actually attractive to infrastructure providers?

Those providers exist and they're efficient enough that they can pass through most of the rewards.

Re: The Merge

#166

Post by nervlord »

pessimizer wrote: post #122
smashem wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> National governments are the source and the only legal creators of money. And those closest to the money printer benefit. And hint, the average joe is furthest from the printer. The future of the average joe is stolen via currency debasement and inflation, but those closest to the printer get richer.

It's people who hold debt who are robbed by inflation, not people who are in debt. The entire political program of the people closest to the money printer is to reduce inflation (and to lower government debt without changing the balance of payments, which by necessity shifts that same debt to individuals.)

No post body was provided.

Re: The Merge

#167

Post by wmf »

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…

there is no opportunity to realistically experiment with the change beforehand

Yeah, it's a shame they couldn't test the merge three times on the Ropsten, Sepolia, and Goerli testnets.

Re: The Merge

#168

Post by seibelj »

latchkey wrote: post #155
seibelj wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

It wasn't a comparison about the power requirements between PoW and zk proofs. In other words: Switching to PoS, removes power allocated to GPUs for ethash mining. Adding ASICs for zk creates a requirement that doesn't exist today, for using power.

I believe the zk provers will only be for L2s. The base layer will always be the way it is now. The base layer will be settlement for various shards, as it is now for Arbitrum and Optimism.

Re: The Merge

#169

Post by jrm4 »

osigurdson wrote: post #141
Banana699 wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 n…

I definitely think it matters. The metaphor of "some moron pulling a slot machine over and over and over" (which is what I use) is more accurate and I think better represents what's actually happening than something like "solving," which evokes the image of smart person (or machine) sitting down and using their brain to discover useful information. When you say "solve" it implies that the information that is produced by the process is inherently valuable.

Re: The Merge

#170

Post by nuclearnice1 »

alchemist1e9 wrote: post #133
pa7x1 wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The HW requirements increase very very minimally. See this response on reddit: https://www.reddit.com/r/ethstaker/comments/nk9qzt/multiple_...

Do you see the same issue I see? I don’t understand why they aren’t concerned about it.

The validators have staked 32 ETH to the network. If they stay up, they get rewards. If they go down, they get hit with penalties. This incentivizes building a reliable system.

Is it sufficient? I’m not sure.

Post reply on HN