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The Merge

ethereum.org

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Re: The Merge

#281

Post by everfree »

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…

> Which exchange or fund will lose a vast chunk of its holdings?

You really think that a crypto exchange's staff is prone to sending all their customer funds to some random email scammer?

Re: The Merge

#282

Post by lottin »

WFHRenaissance wrote: post #102
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…

Eh, a mathematical puzzle is being solved via brute-force. My intent was to explain briefly that the problem/puzzle is by nature computationally-intensive to the extent that brute-force is the most efficient way to solve/complete it.

It's a guessing game. Referring to a guessing game as a complex mathematical problem is misleading.

Re: The Merge

#283

Post by mypastself »

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’ll just paste my questions from below:

Can someone clarify the point about expected price action changes for ETH/USD and other pairs?

Presumably the author believes a smaller proportion of Ether will be regularly traded than on the PoW system, but will the total staked (i.e. held) amount be sufficient to impact prices significantly? Also, why would we expect stakers to not take their profits on a regular basis? (Note: another commenter pointed out unstaking won’t be possible for the time being. That does answer the question for the short-term).

What’s the meaning (and reasoning behind) the following statement:

> Ethereum will move from a system that has roughly $20mm a day of structural outflows to a system that has roughly a half a million dollars a day of structural inflows.

Re: The Merge

#284

Post by dmitriid »

mastazi wrote: post #134
falcolas wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

If you own a large amount of a currency, you want to ensure that the currency in question is trusted, or otherwise that currency would end up losing its value. It is your greed that is guiding you, not your benevolence.

> If you own a large amount of a currency,

you rug pull, divest into hard cash at peak,

Re: The Merge

#285

Post by ComodoHacker »

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…

> Any relatively recent consumer hardware should be capable of running the software required to operate a 32 ETH staking node.

What about storage requirements? How long before you need a dedicated NAS to operate a node?

Re: The Merge

#286

Post by shukantpal »

lottin wrote: post #282
WFHRenaissance wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Eh, a mathematical puzzle is being solved via brute-force. My intent was to explain briefly that the problem/puzzle is by nature computationally-intensive to the extent that brute-force is the most efficient way to solve/complete it.

It's a guessing game. Referring to a guessing game as a complex mathematical problem is misleading.

False. The problem is so complex we have to resort to guessing / brute force to solve it; if it's so easy, give me a closed-form solution so I can become rich.

Re: The Merge

#287

Post by lottin »

mastazi wrote: post #134
falcolas wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

If you own a large amount of a currency, you want to ensure that the currency in question is trusted, or otherwise that currency would end up losing its value. It is your greed that is guiding you, not your benevolence.

Google short selling.

Re: The Merge

#288

Post by lottin »

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.

This isn't argument against PoS, because mining rigs can also be borrowed. Anything can be borrowed.

Re: The Merge

#289

Post by everfree »

setr wrote: post #220
ikt wrote: post #182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can read more here when it was posted previously: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29366310 Basically he built up a strawman and then burned it to the ground.

I’m scouring through the comment chain but I’m not really finding such a definitive response. I’m assuming you’re referring to the first chain of comments, but that seems to boil down to “the attack exists but it’s fine because to successfully attack the network would destroy the network, and with it any profit you’ve made in the attack; thus you cannot profit” — but this is directly addressed by the “nothing at stak…

The writer of the article supposes that it's a critical vulnerability that a validator can come up with an "equally valid" alternate history for Ethereum that stems from a fork several months prior, after the validator has already withdrawn their stake from the canonical chain to prevent slashing.

In reality, everyone just ignores the attacker's chain, because it attempts to rewrite not seconds, minutes, or days of canonical history (periods of time short enough that the identity of the canonical chain might be in question), but many months of history that the entire world has already agreed on and that node software refuses to reorganize the chain past.

This post by Vitalik in 2014, shortly before the launch of Ethereum, explains why this "weak subjectivity" property of PoS is not nearly as problematic as PoW proponents make it out to be.

https://blog.ethereum.org/2014/11/25/proof-stake-learned-lov...

Re: The Merge

#290

Post by Josde »

shukantpal wrote: post #286
lottin wrote: post #282

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a guessing game. Referring to a guessing game as a complex mathematical problem is misleading.

False. The problem is so complex we have to resort to guessing / brute force to solve it; if it's so easy, give me a closed-form solution so I can become rich.

While that is true, I think the point that other users are trying to make is that wording it as "a complex mathematical problem being solved" makes it look like that work is doing something useful when it really is not.
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