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Mainnet Merge Announcement

blog.ethereum.org

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Re: Mainnet Merge Announcement

#71

Post by immibis »

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.

And then the ETH becomes worthless, and despite having all the ETH, those people have no real-world money.

Re: Mainnet Merge Announcement

#72

Post by spywaregorilla »

JohnJamesRambo wrote: post #39
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…

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).”

I'm pretty much just asking the same question on every thread now. How does something get slashed? These articles say nothing about it. There are many docs saying all you need is 1 honest slasher node. Well, what happens if you have a dishonest slasher node?

Re: Mainnet Merge Announcement

#74

Post by leppr »

bowsamic wrote: post #35
DanHulton wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

The wealth centralization effect is not an inherent aspect of crypto, it was nothing more than a result of the liquidity injections from central banks.

The same argument could be made of all scarce assets that rocketed in price in the past years. Watches, the stock market, and real estate don't inherently "centralize wealth". Their price appreciation was only a symptom of the reduced cost of debt, which naturally favors the wealthiest, which reflects in the price of what wealthy people buy when they have too much money (scarce assets).

The base concept of cryptocurrency is enabling free market economies by bypassing government regulation, and at least in the case of Bitcoin and Ethereum, regulating inflation by setting it in code, instead of being opaquely decided by a few wealthy people (some of them convicted of insider-trading[1]). Those two things tend to favor bottom-up wealth creation, rather than the trickle-down model fiat currencies encourage. That's a wealth decentralization force, not centralization like you claim.

[1]: https://finance.yahoo.com/news/a-timeline-of-the-federal-res...

Re: Mainnet Merge Announcement

#75

Post by cowtools »

bitxbitxbitcoin wrote: post #9
codesnik wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

is it low cost, though?

Compared to similarly functioning systems that are decentralized and distributed? Yes.

Bitcoin and Etherium are probably amongst the most inefficient cryptocurrencies on the market.

Re: Mainnet Merge Announcement

#76

Post by spywaregorilla »

PretzelPirate wrote: post #70
spywaregorilla wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I'm almost certain that is incorrect. This is an optional, expensive seeming process.

e.g. https://docs.prylabs.network/docs/prysm-usage/slasher

Re: Mainnet Merge Announcement

#77

Post by Anunayj »

xur17 wrote: post #59
Anunayj wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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-pres…

> 9.9% percentage of that also was set aside for "founders" > Today it accounts for something like 59% of total supply. Make what you will of that. Can you help me understand what exactly this means? Ethereum's supply has grown since the presale, so if anything the 9.9% should have gotten smaller since then.

Oh, I was a bit unclear there. The 9.9% was of the total money that was raised in the ICO (60m) and ended up being ~5.9m.

The total initial premine was 72m (~59% of today's supply).

I think someone more knowledgeable might provide a better breakdown of those funds, except that the article(s) linked covers it a lot better than my comment.

Re: Mainnet Merge Announcement

#78

Post by immibis »

stockpricethrow wrote: post #17

How will this affect the revenue and stock prices of major hardware manufacturers? Particularly GPU manufacturers? If the price of GPU's drop due to a large second hand market opening up, would GPU manufacturers be hurt in any way?

Nvidia is down almost 50%... from its high around Jan/Dec. I suspect people saw this coming from a mile away. If you think the effect is likely to be stronger or weaker than the market predicts, bet on it now.

Re: Mainnet Merge Announcement

#79

Post by dmichulke »

tylersmith wrote: post #31
dmichulke wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

The rules who to include in the block. Imagine 51% of validators exclude people who use Tornado cash (as an example of addresses that somehow relate to a smart contract)

The rest has to agree otherwise their stake is slashed.

This can't happen in bitcoin.

Please correct me if I'm wrong.

Re: Mainnet Merge Announcement

#80

Post by gfodor »

muglug wrote: post #11
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…

As long as Bitcoin is still around crypto will have a heavy environmental asterisk attached to it. But, at least to me, this will make ethereum-based NFTs of interesting art a more morally-justifiable purchase.

No, I think once ethereum goes PoS, average people will stop caring about the energy use of crypto because the public at large won’t be able to digest the nuance.
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