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The Merge

ethereum.org

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Re: The Merge

#391

Post by randomran01234 »

atherton33 wrote: post #378
randomran01234 wrote: post #355

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If the 51% is a single staker or small group of colluding stakers attacking the chain, the rest of the users will probably not want to continue using that chain. The users can activate a soft fork, just by changing the rules of the code to burn the attacker’s funds, and running the updated client software. The remaining honest stakers can then continue to follow the head of the non-attacked chain, and the attacker wo…

If it's just off-chain social consensus that matters what purpose does the crypto even serve?

Most crypto including Bitcoin is governed off-chain. People come to consensus on a set of rules that allows them to create a public and permissionless BFT ledger. Attacking the ledger then costs millions or billions of dollars. If one dishonest node or a group of colluding actors decide to spend this much to amass majority control of the network, the rest of the network can decide to fork the protocol to burn their staked capital.

The main goal of crypto - the base token and protocol rewards from PoW or PoS - is to secure this network and keep it permissionless and decentralized.

Re: The Merge

#392

Post by latchkey »

littlestymaar wrote: post #390
latchkey wrote: post #272

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Miners knew from day one that PoS was eventual. As a very large ETH miner, I'm not that concerned about that part of things. Why? The business model for my company was built around a larger idea than just mining. Mining was just a great way for us to bootstrap the business. Let's also not forget that there are other coins out there to mine. There is a huge potential for something to take ETH's place... whether that h…

> Miners knew from day one that PoS was eventual. It keep getting repeated over and over as if it was an argument, but if someone warns that they will harm you, then do it, and eventually gets away with it, it is actually a proof that they have unchecked power over you, and clearly not an argument against the existence of such a power imbalance…

That is an interesting view on things. Where is the 'harm' here? ETH miners had a choice to mine, or not. If you didn't like the rules that were set out LONG in advance, then don't play the game.

Similar to how people say not to depend on an API from a single company because that company could shut you down. Except in this case, the company told people, in advance, that some day in the future, they were absolutely going to shut you down.

Re: The Merge

#393

Post by wyager »

everfree wrote: post #376
wyager wrote: post #373

Earlier quoted context omitted.

PoS people always add more epicycles and claim it solves the problem. On closer inspection, it never has. At this point, I'm tired of wasting my time by humoring them. Once again, this seems to be the case. I can see at least one trivial attack against RANDAO, as is often the case with many-party interactive RNG: you just have to be willing to lose your pledge.

> I can see at least one trivial attack against RANDAO, as is often the case with many-party interactive RNG: you just have to be willing to lose your pledge. What is the trivial attack, and why does it involve losing your pledge? To the best of my knowledge none of Ethereum's slashing conditions involve the RANDAO, so you've piqued my interest. Unless by "losing pledge", you mean extra-protocol slashing by social co…

Let's say you're gambling 10k ETH on the last bit of RANDAO output being 1. You pay 5k to enter, and get either 0 or 10k back.

Become a contributor to RANDAO. Put up your pledge (say 1k ETH). Set up the bet. Wait to be the last person to submit their pre-image to RANDAO. Calculate what the post-image will be. If it has a 1 at the end (and you would win 10k), continue as normal. If it would have a 0 (and you would win nothing), refuse to disclose your pre-image and lose your pledge. Now it's 50/50 you win.

50% win and keep pledge. 25% win and lose pledge. 25% lose and lose pledge.

EV (0.510k + 0.259k + 0.25*-1k)-5k = 2k.

You can submit more than 1 pledge to get your odds arbitrarily close to 100%.

Re: The Merge

#394

Post by troutwine »

mastazi wrote: post #385
troutwine wrote: post #196

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Eh, I think it’s naive to believe that greed is sufficient protection. Owning a bunch of ETH so you can set ETH on fire would be a waste of money, only so long as the person setting the fire didn’t value the mischief more than the ETH. I don’t see why nation states wouldn’t attack each other by burning down the crypto assets of citizens, either.

> I think it’s naive to believe that greed is sufficient protection. I never said that, I actually agree with you. I was just explaining GP's point to parent who in my opinion missed it.

Ah, apologies. I read you as agreeing with and clarifying GP's argument.

Re: The Merge

#395

Post by everfree »

wyager wrote: post #393
everfree wrote: post #376

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I can see at least one trivial attack against RANDAO, as is often the case with many-party interactive RNG: you just have to be willing to lose your pledge. What is the trivial attack, and why does it involve losing your pledge? To the best of my knowledge none of Ethereum's slashing conditions involve the RANDAO, so you've piqued my interest. Unless by "losing pledge", you mean extra-protocol slashing by social co…

Let's say you're gambling 10k ETH on the last bit of RANDAO output being 1. You pay 5k to enter, and get either 0 or 10k back. Become a contributor to RANDAO. Put up your pledge (say 1k ETH). Set up the bet. Wait to be the last person to submit their pre-image to RANDAO. Calculate what the post-image will be. If it has a 1 at the end (and you would win 10k), continue as normal. If it would have a 0 (and you would win…

> Let's say you're gambling 10k ETH on the last bit of RANDAO output being 1. You pay 5k to enter, and get either 0 or 10k back.

Ethereum does not let you make a gamble like that on the protocol level, so it sounds like your proposed attack is against a theoretical gambling platform that naively relies on RANDAO as its sole source of randomness for resolving bets, and that naively allows a user to resolve their bet based on a user-selected RANDAO round, correct? From your previous comment, I somehow got the idea that you were going to describe an attack against Ethereum's Proof of Stake.

This section of this article does a good mathematical analysis of RANDAO biasability in the context of leader selection in Ethereum's beacon chain, in my opinion:

https://eth2book.info/altair/part2/building_blocks/randomnes...

The takeaway from the math is that while it's true the RANDAO is biasable in one-off circumstances through the last-actor pre-image withholding attack you describe, trying to use such an attack to influence network consensus is a no-go. The majority of honest actors ensure that any attempt to bias the RANDAO is ephemeral, where it's only useful for doing a bit flip attack at an unpredictable block height against improperly implemented casino software.

I have to say I am a bit disappointed. I thought you were going to describe an attack against PoS.

Re: The Merge

#396

Post by hunter-gatherer »

osigurdson wrote: post #229
hunter-gatherer wrote: post #205

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree with this point for the same reason; what matters is how people interpret it. Of course if I'm talking to a CS type I can go right into the details. The analolgy I use with laymen is solving a large rubiks cube by randomly moving pieces instead of using any other sophisticated methods. Somebody please correct my if I'm wrong as I haven't been in the cryptocurrency space for a minute, but I believe most of the…

The only problem with the rubik's cube analogy is that it may suggest that there are more optimal methods to solve it and they just aren't being used.

Yes, I agree. In real life I emphasize the bit I said about "randomly moving pieces", and explain that it is a feature built into the protocol. Of course there is a lot of mathematic handwavery, but people seem to get it after the fact. I've also learned that most people don't actually realize there are more optimal ways to solve rubiks cubes anyways.

Re: The Merge

#397

Post by baobabKoodaa »

pixelbro wrote: post #386
baobabKoodaa wrote: post #382

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Oh, get off it. He's not "pretending to disagree", merely providing further context for the anti-utility of the PoW algorithm. The point is that the colloquial understanding of "solving a problem" implies more utility than what is actually happening, which is equivalent to guessing a random number. The mere statement that a problem is being solved at all implies that useful work is being done, which is not the case…

> Obviously not. That message is expressing strong disagreement, not further agreement. Not obvious to me . But sure, I'm confused all right. Confused at how lottin's comment could be interpreted as contesting Josde's, when it reads as a reinforcing restatement to me. Confused at your hostility and accusations of misinformation. Perhaps you're confused about how online conversations work? Sometimes people reply with…

Ok, you and one other person said that lottin's comment doesn't read as disagreement, so maybe you're right and I'm the one reading it incorrectly. I'll take your feedback. Seems like I might be in the wrong here.

Re: The Merge

#398

Post by dragontamer »

mattwilsonn888 wrote: post #223
dragontamer wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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" cycl…

Let us know when you figure out that "some other reason." The primary defense against 51% attacks is waiting the amount of block confirmations that make the cost of attacking the block your transaction is in more than the possible rewards. If we all have to worry about people randomly burning money to 51% attack blockchains then the whole premise is bunko anyways. Here's a hint, randomly attacking the network in a wa…

I don't need to identify a reason. I simply need to point out that BSV, BTG, and ETC have all suffered 51% attacks already. So someone out there is motivated to perform these attacks.

Re: The Merge

#400

Post by sph »

jules-jules wrote: post #309
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…

>Most estimates put the expected energy savings from the switch to PoS to be around 99% It's actually closer to 99.95% [1] which is significantly less than a 99% reduction. [1] https://twitter.com/0xstark/status/1457823831360368640

*significantly more

99.95% reduction in power usage is more than 99% reduction.

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