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Mainnet Merge Announcement

blog.ethereum.org

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Re: Mainnet Merge Announcement

#31

Post by tylersmith »

dmichulke wrote: post #21
spywaregorilla wrote: post #10

Is it incorrect to say that ethereum is now entirely centralized with some extra steps? Like, you have this proof of stake thing, but the only reason it works is because there's just a small number of validators, which is just going to be the ethereum foundation and friends. edit: putting this at the top because nobody is responding on topic. I am NOT talking about the class of people who stake 32 eth to validate nod…

Let's say it like this: In the near future the rules are made by the people with the most ETH and soon after the most ETHs will be earned by the people who make the rules.

That's not true. Stakers don't make the rules any more than miners make Bitcoin rules.

Re: Mainnet Merge Announcement

#32

Post by davidy123 »

Oh funny, I just, inspired by Stable Diffusion, ordered a 3090 ti at what I thought was a good price. Well, I have 30 days to see what happens… There could be an interesting ripple effect if GPUs become more widely available in general. «Simple division yields an estimate of 13.982 million GPUs mining Ethereum on April 16 2021.» (from https://linustechtips.com/topic/1327701-honest-question-how-...)

Re: Mainnet Merge Announcement

#33

Post by zaptrem »

spywaregorilla wrote: post #19
JohnJamesRambo wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes it is incorrect. https://i.redd.it/5lhlmwdg27j91.png Ethereum will be more decentralized after proof of stake. No longer do you need massive amounts of electricity and insider access to gpu or asic manufacturers.

This is not the question I am asking. You can have many people putting up their 32 ETH. Sure that's "decentralized". But what if most of the stakers collude to double spend tokens? My understanding is that there is an additional layer of validators that have the power to force them to give up their stake as a penalty. Hence "proof of stake". And that there are very few validators. And it's really just the ethereum fo…

You’re mistaken, validators and stakers are one and the same. A 51% attack becomes unbelievably more expensive in a proof of stake system, especially because at the end of it all of your money is burned (whereas with POW you get to keep the GPUs unless they change the algo).

Re: Mainnet Merge Announcement

#34

Post by bowsamic »

spywaregorilla wrote: post #19
JohnJamesRambo wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes it is incorrect. https://i.redd.it/5lhlmwdg27j91.png Ethereum will be more decentralized after proof of stake. No longer do you need massive amounts of electricity and insider access to gpu or asic manufacturers.

This is not the question I am asking. You can have many people putting up their 32 ETH. Sure that's "decentralized". But what if most of the stakers collude to double spend tokens? My understanding is that there is an additional layer of validators that have the power to force them to give up their stake as a penalty. Hence "proof of stake". And that there are very few validators. And it's really just the ethereum fo…

What if most of the miners collude to double spend tokens? The problem is the same.

The difference is that proof of work automatically tends to centralisation due to its economy of scale: it's cheaper to add one more miner to your pool if you already have a big mining operation, but staking 1 eth is always staking 1 eth.

Both PoS and PoW have the problem where you can buy out the majority if you have the power to do so.

Re: Mainnet Merge Announcement

#35

Post by bowsamic »

DanHulton wrote: post #25
rvz wrote: post #8

> Ethereum’s transition to proof-of-stake has been a loooong time coming. Thank you to everyone who contributed to researching, specifying, developing, analyzing, testing, breaking, fixing, or explaining everything that got us to The Merge. At least now it has a hard deadline which will silence the parroting critics on 'burning up the planet', 'The merge will NEVER happen', 'repeated delays', etc. But I imagine that…

That has hardly ever been the ONLY problem crypto has had, ands acting as if solving this one problem should silence all dissenters lest they be considered unserious is disingenuous. Look at the comments for literally any popular article about crypto on this site, hell, keep scrolling on this one and you'll probably find plenty. I, for one, am happy that enabling art theft and fraud on a massive scale will shortly no…

Honestly I think the biggest problem with crypto is how it has mainly been used either to scam people or to further centralise wealth towards the richest. I have seen very little morally good outcomes of crypto yet, but a vast number of morally bad ones.

Re: Mainnet Merge Announcement

#36

Post by steeleduncan »

potatototoo99 wrote: post #23
spywaregorilla wrote: post #10

Is it incorrect to say that ethereum is now entirely centralized with some extra steps? Like, you have this proof of stake thing, but the only reason it works is because there's just a small number of validators, which is just going to be the ethereum foundation and friends. edit: putting this at the top because nobody is responding on topic. I am NOT talking about the class of people who stake 32 eth to validate nod…

Yes, it is correct. It was already much more centralized than for instance bitcoin, due to the difficulty in having a validator node, but now it is just managed by the big holders and that's that. Furthermore, they will censor transactions according to US laws at least, and if you try to validate and not censor, you will get your staked coins taken from you by the protocol (as opposed to PoW, where you just fail to g…

This is quite far from true

> but now it is just managed by the big holders

To have any influence during the proof of work days you needed a server farm. This was also restricted to a small elite who could, if they wished, censor transactions.

Re: Mainnet Merge Announcement

#37

Post by [deleted] »

bowsamic wrote: post #27
potatototoo99 wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, it is correct. It was already much more centralized than for instance bitcoin, due to the difficulty in having a validator node, but now it is just managed by the big holders and that's that. Furthermore, they will censor transactions according to US laws at least, and if you try to validate and not censor, you will get your staked coins taken from you by the protocol (as opposed to PoW, where you just fail to g…

No, it's the opposite. Proof of work is more centralised than proof of stake, because the former has an economy of scale: it's cheaper to add a single miner if you are a big mining operation vs a small mining operation. On the other hand, staking 1 eth is always staking 1 eth.

[deleted]

Re: Mainnet Merge Announcement

#38

Post by TakeBlaster16 »

spywaregorilla wrote: post #10

Is it incorrect to say that ethereum is now entirely centralized with some extra steps? Like, you have this proof of stake thing, but the only reason it works is because there's just a small number of validators, which is just going to be the ethereum foundation and friends. edit: putting this at the top because nobody is responding on topic. I am NOT talking about the class of people who stake 32 eth to validate nod…

I think it will become centralized, but not in the way that you think. We're likely to see base-layer transaction censorship, since nodes are no longer allowed to disagree with each other (or they'll be slashed), and far more than 33% of staked value is in the USA (and subject to OFAC compliance).

I explained in more detail here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32532604

Re: Mainnet Merge Announcement

#39

Post by JohnJamesRambo »

spywaregorilla wrote: post #19
JohnJamesRambo wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes it is incorrect. https://i.redd.it/5lhlmwdg27j91.png Ethereum will be more decentralized after proof of stake. No longer do you need massive amounts of electricity and insider access to gpu or asic manufacturers.

This is not the question I am asking. You can have many people putting up their 32 ETH. Sure that's "decentralized". But what if most of the stakers collude to double spend tokens? My understanding is that there is an additional layer of validators that have the power to force them to give up their stake as a penalty. Hence "proof of stake". And that there are very few validators. And it's really just the ethereum fo…

https://ethereum.org/en/developers/docs/consensus-mechanisms...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proof_of_stake

Start here.

“The threat of a 51% attack still exists on proof-of-stake as it does on proof-of-work, but it's even riskier for the attackers. A attacker would need 51% of the staked ETH (about $15,000,000,000 USD).”

Re: Mainnet Merge Announcement

#40

Post by bitxbitxbitcoin »

spywaregorilla wrote: post #19
JohnJamesRambo wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes it is incorrect. https://i.redd.it/5lhlmwdg27j91.png Ethereum will be more decentralized after proof of stake. No longer do you need massive amounts of electricity and insider access to gpu or asic manufacturers.

This is not the question I am asking. You can have many people putting up their 32 ETH. Sure that's "decentralized". But what if most of the stakers collude to double spend tokens? My understanding is that there is an additional layer of validators that have the power to force them to give up their stake as a penalty. Hence "proof of stake". And that there are very few validators. And it's really just the ethereum fo…

What you are referring to is an old problem (arguably now solved) called “nothing at stake.” Short, bastardized answer is that something built into the consensus code called “slashing” keeps the validators/shakers from trying to stake two versions of a block.
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