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Mainnet Merge Announcement

blog.ethereum.org

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Re: Mainnet Merge Announcement

#61

Post by immibis »

TakeBlaster16 wrote: post #53
steeleduncan wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

It's incorrect to say PoW miners can censor transactions. With PoS, the big players control the small players. If the minority doesn't play along, their funds will be slashed by the procotol. If 66% of validators censor you, your transaction will never be finalized. With PoW, the big players cannot coerce the small players in any way. Everyone independently controls their own blocks. If 66% of miners censor you, your…

The part about PoW is falase. If 66% of miners really want to censor you, they will also censor the other 34% of miners if those miners choose to mine a block including your transactions.

If 50% (or thereabouts) they can prevent your transactions from every getting confirmed. Sure, the 34% could collude until they happen to produce 6 blocks in a row, but each individual member of that group would make more money by going along with the censorship and not being censored themselves.

I believe it's similar with PoS, but with somewhat different incentive magnitudes.

Re: Mainnet Merge Announcement

#62

Post by exo762 »

shudza wrote: post #41
bowsamic wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

$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.

There is a confusion in language used. Bitcoin has two types of actors: block consumers and block producers. Ethereum has three types of actors: block consumers, validators and block producers. Thing often described as "full node" does just that - it consumes blocks, checking if blocks are valid. Ethereum validators are different, they not only consume blocks, they also attest their correctness for the rest of the network.

Re: Mainnet Merge Announcement

#64

Post by spywaregorilla »

TakeBlaster16 wrote: post #38
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

Who gets to decide if something should be slashed

Re: Mainnet Merge Announcement

#65

Post by immibis »

spywaregorilla wrote: post #56
bitxbitxbitcoin wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Who gets to run a slasher node and who gets to agree that its valid to slash a block?

I don't know the specific rules for Ethereum, but in general PoS systems, anyone can slash. All you have to do is submit two different headers for the same block signed by the same validator. This proves the validator is cheating. The person who submits the proof may get to keep some of the validator's slashed money, which is a good incentive to run slashing nodes as this can amount to thousands of dollars per slash, and a good incentive not to double-validate as this can amount to thousands of dollars per time you are caught.

Perversely, since double-validation happens rarely, since it is expensive, the actual interface for slashing on e.g. BSC is not well-documented or user-friendly.

Re: Mainnet Merge Announcement

#67

Post by TakeBlaster16 »

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.

Running a small validator is much riskier than being a small miner. If you're running a validator and have network downtime or any operational issues, you risk losing funds (the inactivity leak[1]). If you're mining and you have downtime, your only downside is the opportunity cost of not mining any blocks while you're offline.

[1]: https://eth2book.info/altair/part2/incentives/inactivity

Re: Mainnet Merge Announcement

#68

Post by stavros »

camjw wrote: post #47
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?

If you have a GPU that has more than 4 GB VRAM, you should be able to easily run it:

https://github.com/basujindal/stable-diffusion

I didn't manage to run it on mine, as it segfaults, but I've heard of people running it fine on an old 1060 (which I have too).

Re: Mainnet Merge Announcement

#69

Post by Anon1096 »

zyphr wrote: post #44
bowsamic wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

32 eth is such a small investment that it isn't that meaningfully different than 1 eth.

Re: Mainnet Merge Announcement

#70

Post by PretzelPirate »

spywaregorilla wrote: post #55
zaptrem wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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).

stakers/validators vs. slashers

There is no defined role called a “slasher”. There are randomly-decided committees that are regularly updated as part of Ethereum PoS consensus that play different roles. Your validator could be in any one of those roles (or in a pending state) at any time.
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