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Mainnet Merge Announcement

blog.ethereum.org

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Re: Mainnet Merge Announcement

#141

Post by A4ET8a8uTh0 »

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 only proves that ether is already too centralized.

FWIW. I used to mine eth on a small scale so I am obviously biased.

Re: Mainnet Merge Announcement

#142

Post by drexlspivey »

jahewson wrote: post #110
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?

Unlikely. There are plenty of other coins out there to mine and one of the advantages of GPU vs ASIC is that you can just switch instantly.

Nope, mining needs to be profitable too. There is not enough margin in all altcoins combined to support the influx of GPUs coming from ethereum.

Re: Mainnet Merge Announcement

#143

Post by bluelightning2k »

I can be anti-crypto and still appreciate this.

First - clearly reducing the environmental impact of anything by this much is pro-humanity. (Although having the impact to begin with is another story.)

Secondly from a sheer technical coordination perspective there's a feeling of pulling off a complex dance. Makes it hard for any of us to claim our workloads aren't testable!

Re: Mainnet Merge Announcement

#145

Post by paulmd »

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.

the existence of ethereum as proof-of-stake makes it impossible to stop proof-of-work coins via exchange regulation/etc. It's trivial to run exchanges on ethereum and therefore they largely exist outside any possibility of regulation. Previously you could sorta leverage this in via the exchanges/etc but now there is no possibility of ever banning the environmentally-harmful PoW coins.

Re: Mainnet Merge Announcement

#146

Post by upsidesinclude »

IHLayman wrote: post #26
thebeastie wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, the validators are anyone with a stake in the system, not just the Ethereum foundation and friends.

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.

Even that isn't accurate because many groups and exchanges will aggregate eth from users. Then users with far less than 32 eth are participants in a stake through their chosen representative.

Re: Mainnet Merge Announcement

#147

Post by exo762 »

Rebelgecko wrote: post #130
exo762 wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 ne…

Who validates the validators? The other validators?

No. Their role is a bit different. They exist to prevent so called nothing-at-stake attack. If each block has to be signed by known parties (parties selected in a way attackers can't control), and those parties are bound by slashing rules (signing two different blocks for the same height is grounds for slashing), than it is very hard to pull off nothing-at-stake attack and create an alternative chain.

Re: Mainnet Merge Announcement

#148

Post by ithinkso »

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.

51% is Bitcoin. That's what decentralized means

Re: Mainnet Merge Announcement

#149

Post by exo762 »

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

Inactivity leak for a solo validator going offline is very cheap, and it is by design. People are expected to run validator nodes on home connections and be profitable.

Re: Mainnet Merge Announcement

#150

Post by drog »

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

No.

Inactivity leak is an emergency measure to restore liveness when the network stops finalizing blocks. It happens when >33% of validators are offline(WW3 scenario), major bug in widespread implementation, etc.

Your link explains that.

ETH2 is friendly to home stackers - you may lose some profit by being offline sometimes, and in the worst case minor penalties are applied.

EDIT: If you are interested in a much better description of what happens if you are offline, see this:

https://eth2book.info/altair/part2/incentives/penalties

Some points from the link:

- penalties =/= slashing

- If you are online > 42.5% of the sime - you are earning profits

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