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Mainnet Merge Announcement

blog.ethereum.org

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Re: Mainnet Merge Announcement

#161

Post by TakeBlaster16 »

jsheard wrote: post #123
spywaregorilla wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So if I acquire 51% of validation power, and you catch me cheating, the person who gets to decide if I get punished is me?

Technically yes, but I think the idea is that it would be incredibly expensive and unproductive to pull off such an attack. You'd first have to acquire billions of dollars worth of Ethereum, and then launching that attack would torpedo any trust in the network and send the value of Ethereum to zero, lighting your billions of dollars on fire. The theory is that it's too expensive to realistically do for the lulz or ou…

Or you could be a government with billions staked in your jurisdiction, and bureaucratic indifference to the outcome of your regulatory actions.

Re: Mainnet Merge Announcement

#162

Post by exo762 »

dmichulke wrote: post #154
exo762 wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In scenario when 51% coalition is censoring everyone else (block producers / validators that don't belong to coalition), the way out is via UASF - user-activated soft fork. This will cause slashing of attackers via "inactivity leak mechanism". Source: https://vitalik.ca/general/2020/11/06/pos2020.html

Thanks. To me it seems this would greatly damage the value of the assets (like the blockchain wars but for ETH) but yes, it can be recovered from. I think the problem here is centralization and this can be more easily avoided in PoW (because of energy costs rising a lot if all miners go in one place) instead of PoS (there are no physical restraints, so in theory all staking pools could be in Switzerland). So politica…

> To me it seems this would greatly damage the value of the assets but it can be recovered from.

Why? I see this as an event that would skyrocket the price. It at the same time affirms commitment of the community to its stated values and decreases the supply greatly.

Re: Mainnet Merge Announcement

#163

Post by spywaregorilla »

jsheard wrote: post #123
spywaregorilla wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So if I acquire 51% of validation power, and you catch me cheating, the person who gets to decide if I get punished is me?

Technically yes, but I think the idea is that it would be incredibly expensive and unproductive to pull off such an attack. You'd first have to acquire billions of dollars worth of Ethereum, and then launching that attack would torpedo any trust in the network and send the value of Ethereum to zero, lighting your billions of dollars on fire. The theory is that it's too expensive to realistically do for the lulz or ou…

So what happens if I instead submit a billion slasher reports that claim the eth foundation nodes have all lied, none of which contain valid evidence, and continue to do so every second. If there's no gatekeeper for these reports, then they're all valid. And they still need to be voted on, right?

Re: Mainnet Merge Announcement

#164

Post by drcode »

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…

Totally wrong. Anybody has the ability to declare "the people with stakes did not validate correctly"

In this context, what it means is that a person posted conflicting validation messages on different parts of the network, and anybody who can show the existence of two such conflicting messages can post it to the blockchain, receive a reward, and the offending validator gets slashed.

(There are also other ways you can get slashed, read the POS documentation if you want to learn the details) All methods of slashing are fully decentralized.

Re: Mainnet Merge Announcement

#165

Post by rglullis »

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 am talking about the class of people with the ability to declare that the people with stakes did not validate correctly and therefore lose their stakes. My understanding is that this is a very small number of people and is mostly just the ethereum foundation.

There is no such thing as "separate slashers", and there is no such thing as distinct classes of validators. Whoever told you that is spreading baseless FUD.

Re: Mainnet Merge Announcement

#166

Post by sam0x17 »

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% attack on a proof of stake network would be a truly "I just want to watch the world burn" scenario, since you'd have to control 51% of the currency, why even bother. You control most of the money, why risk losing it with a takeover attempt?

Re: Mainnet Merge Announcement

#167

Post by flarex »

Anunayj wrote: post #42
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.

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…

It should also be noted in the 7 years since launch that a large portion of that 59% would have been sold or lost and hence re-distributed to other users on the platform.

Re: Mainnet Merge Announcement

#168

Post by drcode »

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.

There is no such a power, slashing is 100% decentralized.

The key innovation in modern POS systems was figuring out how to do this, it is a solved problem.

Re: Mainnet Merge Announcement

#169

Post by bhaak »

spywaregorilla wrote: post #103
immibis wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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,…

> This proves the validator is cheating. To whom? Who gets to decide to slash the funds? I caught you cheating and can prove it. You don't give a shit and control 51% of the network. How do you get punished?

Social slashing. The honest parts of the community would organize and fork you away.

If you were following the current events on Ethereum, this question has just arisen in the last weeks when the US sanctioned the privacy oriented Tornado Cash contract.

Re: Mainnet Merge Announcement

#170

Post by AlexandrB »

TakeBlaster16 wrote: post #100
immibis wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 g…

I suppose that is possible, but we're thinking of two different incentive structures. If 66% of miners censor their own blocks to comply with OFAC, then eventually the transaction will get in. If 66% of miners not only censor their own blocks, but also collude to continually reorg the chain, then obviously all bets are off, the project has failed, and the exchange rate is headed to 0. I think the former is infinitely…

> If 66% of miners not only censor their own blocks, but also collude to continually reorg the chain, then obviously all bets are off, the project has failed, and the exchange rate is headed to 0.

Is it though? If crypto ever becomes a common currency people will still want to transact in it regardless of corruption/collusion among miners. Most are not going to stop using it for ideological reasons like "miners are altering the chain" unless it negatively impacts their own transactions.

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