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Mainnet Merge Announcement

blog.ethereum.org

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Re: Mainnet Merge Announcement

#131

Post by [deleted] »

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…

[deleted]

Re: Mainnet Merge Announcement

#132

Post by sp332 »

drexlspivey wrote: post #99
immibis wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

People stopped buying GPUs a while back, it makes no sense to buy a GPU for mining 6 months before the merge

It's true they stopped buying new ones, but now they won't have any reason to keep old ones either. I'm expecting (hoping for) a glut of previous-generation GPUs as miners close up shop.

Re: Mainnet Merge Announcement

#133

Post by redox99 »

miloignis wrote: post #58
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…

Apologies if I get this incorrect, I'm an amateur, but I have read about the design - the slashers will likely be few and centralized, but that's not disastrous because the slashers must provide proof of wrong doing to cause someone's ETH to get "slashed". That is, they're likely to be centralized (though they don't have to be! I believe anyone can be one) but they have to prove to everyone that something should be s…

So it works like this:

- If you detect some wrongdoing, like somebody attesting twice, you can get a reward for whistleblowing (free money!)

- However to claim this reward, you have to include it in a block. Therefore if everybody is aware of this wrongdoing, the next block will get the rewards for slashing/whistleblowing.

- Therefore it's economically advantageous to keep this info to yourself, until you get to propose a block, and only then slash and get the rewards.

- There are also what are called altruistic whistleblowers, that as soon as they find wrongdoing, they'll broadcast it (instead of keeping it to themselves) so next block proposer will slash the wrongdoer. These kind of whistleblowers will most likely be run by the Ethereum Foundation

- In practice even if there were no altruistic whistleblowers, it wouldn't really matter because the same software that validators run can also detect wrongdoing, so in practice even with no altruistic whistleblowers, the next block is almost guaranteed to slash the wrongdoer anyway (free money!).

Re: Mainnet Merge Announcement

#134

Post by tboyd47 »

redox99 wrote: post #108
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…

You are spreading false information. Besides the "centralization" thing that was already replied, the part of > 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 get your block in the chain) Is outright false. It is the same as PoW. You choose what transactions you include in your block. So some people may choose to not…

This 51% attack thing is such a canard. If 51% of Bitcoin miners are malicious, the most harm they can do is fail to include your valid transaction in their blocks.

So, your transaction will be confirmed in the next block mined by one of the other 49% of miners. Big whoop.

Re: Mainnet Merge Announcement

#136

Post by thesz »

TakeBlaster16 wrote: post #67
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.

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

One of the attacks on PBFT protocol is to split network in half, send block to one half, do not send anything to other half and the proposer wents offline and restore connectivity between the rest of the nodes.

In that case, without any stakes, half of nodes will be locked to NIL, half - to a valid block.

In case of stakes, byzantine proposer (it is only one node that is really byzantine, but it can control how network is split) can partition network according to a proportion of stakes, so that neither half gets prevalence.

The algorithm in the link you provided does nothing in that case. The only node that will be punished is a byzantine validator which does not care.

The system will be in no-progress-possible state indefinitely.

Re: Mainnet Merge Announcement

#137

Post by proto-n »

tboyd47 wrote: post #134
redox99 wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are spreading false information. Besides the "centralization" thing that was already replied, the part of > 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 get your block in the chain) Is outright false. It is the same as PoW. You choose what transactions you include in your block. So some people may choose to not…

This 51% attack thing is such a canard. If 51% of Bitcoin miners are malicious, the most harm they can do is fail to include your valid transaction in their blocks. So, your transaction will be confirmed in the next block mined by one of the other 49% of miners. Big whoop.

Not correct, they can choose to not accept any blocks containing banned transactions, and still have the longest chain (statistically speaking). That's why the 51% number is significant.

Re: Mainnet Merge Announcement

#138

Post by rictic »

codegladiator wrote: post #96
miloignis wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Apologies if I get this incorrect, I'm an amateur, but I have read about the design - the slashers will likely be few and centralized, but that's not disastrous because the slashers must provide proof of wrong doing to cause someone's ETH to get "slashed". That is, they're likely to be centralized (though they don't have to be! I believe anyone can be one) but they have to prove to everyone that something should be s…

Sounds like the police. Also do they prove before or after slashing?

Prove in a machine legible sense, picture a transaction like: "here are two contradictory blocks validated by validator ABC, including ABC's signature, therefore ABC's stake is slashed". (at least, that's how it worked last time I looked into it)

Re: Mainnet Merge Announcement

#139

Post by mypastself »

zaptrem wrote: post #33
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…

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).

What happens if the majority of infrastructure is provided by a small number of cloud computing services? An attacker with access to those services needn’t stake their own funds, and an “attack” might simply entail complying with local laws.

Re: Mainnet Merge Announcement

#140

Post by redox99 »

tboyd47 wrote: post #134
redox99 wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are spreading false information. Besides the "centralization" thing that was already replied, the part of > 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 get your block in the chain) Is outright false. It is the same as PoW. You choose what transactions you include in your block. So some people may choose to not…

This 51% attack thing is such a canard. If 51% of Bitcoin miners are malicious, the most harm they can do is fail to include your valid transaction in their blocks. So, your transaction will be confirmed in the next block mined by one of the other 49% of miners. Big whoop.

Not true. If 51% of bitcoin miners are malicious they can reorg as often as they'd like, so your transaction will never be included.
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