Mainnet Merge Announcement • Hacker News Board

Re: Mainnet Merge Announcement

#41

Post by shudza » Wed, Aug 24, 2022, 2:40 PM UTC

bowsamic wrote: post #29

IHLayman wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But, a stake has to be at least 32 ETH, where at $1650/ETH lands you at $52,800. So, the validators have to have a significant investment in the platform, more than your average investor, and far more than anyone simply owning ETH. While I don't necessarily agree with the centralization arguments, I do agree that it is a far smaller group of people than you'd think.

$52,800 is a pittance compared to any remotely significant mining operation

you don't need mining equipment to validate transactions on bitcoin, nor do you need to own it. With ETH, you need to own 32 ETH, obviously.

Re: Mainnet Merge Announcement

#42

Post by Anunayj » Wed, Aug 24, 2022, 2:40 PM UTC

JohnJamesRambo wrote: post #13

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 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.

It should however be noted that Ethereum had a ICO [1] on launch, where you could buy ethereum for a particular price.

9.9% percentage of that also was set aside for "founders". (it could however be more [2])

Today it accounts for something like 59% (72m) of total supply (~120m). Make what you will of that.

1. https://www.gemini.com/cryptopedia/initial-coin-offering-exp...

2. https://medium.com/@hasufly/ethereum-presale-dynamics-revisi...

Re: Mainnet Merge Announcement

#43

Post by camjw » Wed, Aug 24, 2022, 2:40 PM UTC

bowsamic wrote: post #34

spywaregorilla wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I don't understand this comment: "but staking 1eth is always staking 1eth".

If I have 100 GPUs and I buy one more can't I turn around and say "But buying one more GPU is just buying one more GPU"? Even if your point is that electricity bills are lower per additional GPU, surely humans discount the value of incremental money after some point so for those with lots of eth incremental eth isn't worth as much?

Re: Mainnet Merge Announcement

#44

Post by zyphr » Wed, Aug 24, 2022, 2:41 PM UTC

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.

You can't stake 1 eth yourself. You need to at least 32 eth. Plus you need to make an investment to run your own a validator.

Re: Mainnet Merge Announcement

#45

Post by bitxbitxbitcoin » Wed, Aug 24, 2022, 2:41 PM UTC

spywaregorilla wrote: post #30

IHLayman wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But, a stake has to be at least 32 ETH, where at $1650/ETH lands you at $52,800. So, the validators have to have a significant investment in the platform, more than your average investor, and far more than anyone simply owning ETH. While I don't necessarily agree with the centralization arguments, I do agree that it is a far smaller group of people than you'd think.

Again, no, not the people putting up the stake. I am asking about the people with the power to declare that people who put up the stake were dishonest in their validations.

The code - not the people. Trust but verify - just like all other FOSS.

Re: Mainnet Merge Announcement

#46

Post by drewp41 » Wed, Aug 24, 2022, 2:42 PM UTC

zelag wrote: post #24

I have a question, why was 32 ETH chosen for one to become a validator? Also, would this number change if value of ETH were to plummet?

It’s basically the minimum amount of ETH needed to ensure there are a lot of validators all in sync. If it was less than 32 ETH, there would be way more validators and it would be very difficult for them to all sync to the correct block every 12 seconds.

Re: Mainnet Merge Announcement

#47

Post by camjw » Wed, Aug 24, 2022, 2:42 PM UTC

davidy123 wrote: post #32

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-... )

Off-topic but have you got any recommendations on stuff to read to set up a GPU at home to run stable diffusion?

Re: Mainnet Merge Announcement

#48

Post by drewp41 » Wed, Aug 24, 2022, 2:43 PM UTC

typingmonkey wrote: post #28

zelag wrote: post #24

I have a question, why was 32 ETH chosen for one to become a validator? Also, would this number change if value of ETH were to plummet?

Originally it was 3200 eth, but the price has risen too much.

Not exactly. The main reason they reduced it to 32 ETH was because of BLS signatures, so a lot more validators could be in sync with each other

But yeah, 32 ETH at the time of the Beacon chain starting was only a few thousand dollars

Re: Mainnet Merge Announcement

#49

Post by chippiewill » Wed, Aug 24, 2022, 2:43 PM UTC

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…

Coordinating and attempting an attack is seriously expensive in proof of stake if something goes wrong due to the slashing

Re: Mainnet Merge Announcement

#50

Post by spywaregorilla » Wed, Aug 24, 2022, 2:44 PM UTC

bowsamic wrote: post #34

spywaregorilla wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

The problem is not the same. In proof of work, it just breaks and you can double spend. In this proof of stake setup, you can double spend, but then the ethereum foundation can punish you with its slashers.