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Mainnet Merge Announcement

blog.ethereum.org

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Re: Mainnet Merge Announcement

#191

Post by MuffinFlavored »

bluelightning2k wrote: post #143

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!

> First - clearly reducing the environmental impact of anything by this much is pro-humanity.

How long until BTC follows suit?

Re: Mainnet Merge Announcement

#192

Post by spywaregorilla »

drcode wrote: post #164
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 ca…

What if they then show bogus evidence

Re: Mainnet Merge Announcement

#193

Post by yuan43 »

It's a brilliant plan really. First, the Ethereum foundation premines the entire supply of ether, then distributes some of it to the "public" through a sale and the rest to miners. Eventually the Foundation produces an upgrade that replaces mining with validators posting collateral in the form of the very token that was premined.

What the announcement doesn't say is how similar Ethereum will become to Ripple post-merge. Yes Ripple doesn't have anywhere near the fancy contract capabilities of Ethereum, nor does it have the concept of validators posting collateral or getting rewards. But in terms of where the power resides and the existence of major chokepoints, they're both very similar.

Re: Mainnet Merge Announcement

#194

Post by samkon »

spaceman_2020 wrote: post #117
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…

Already happening - the biggest miner refused to include Tornado Cash transactions in the mining pool. Stick a fork in it. Ethereum is done. With that degree of centralization, might as well just run a database and call it a day.

Except that these transactions do eventually go through. It’s a relatively soft form of censorship - and doesn’t actually achieve the goal of preventing the transactions.

IMO - this behavior is a blip. As soon as it becomes clear that “censorship” isn’t effective, it will become less popular for validators to do it at all.

Re: Mainnet Merge Announcement

#195

Post by johntb86 »

sp332 wrote: post #132
drexlspivey wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I've heard people warn that used gpus formerly used for mining might be a bad deal, since they've been run flat out 24/7. I don't know how true that is.

Re: Mainnet Merge Announcement

#196

Post by rglullis »

meltyness wrote: post #114

If Ethereum is inflationary, and there is a minimum cost to staking, why would I ever begin to stake if I know that the cost can only go down in the future?

For starters, Ethereum is not inflationary. ETH is minted and burned according to network activity. The more people making transactions (and paying for them) the less ETH will be created. It can even get to the point where some blocks lead to a net burn of ETH.

Why would you stake? Even if the returns were low (compared to what?), people like me are interested in staking merely to help secure the chain at a (relatively low) cost compared to PoW chains, and having an efficient and secure blockchain opens up other opportunities for profit.

In my case, I am less interested in speculating with tokens and I am more interested in seeing a blockchain that can be an actual alternative for cross-border payments. I feel like by becoming a staker (and by working in projects that leverage layer-2 scaling networks [0]) I am contributing to that becoming a reality with a (relatively) low opportunity cost.

[0]: https://hub20.io

Re: Mainnet Merge Announcement

#198

Post by zionic »

erwinh wrote: post #151

What we see in the Tezos chain (liquid/delegated proof-of-stake) is that big custodial wallets for the exchanges have grown to be the largest block bakers: https://thestackreport.xyz/articles/top-tezos-block-producer... With ethereum the staking mechanism is a bit more complex, my understanding is you lock your stake for quite a while so maybe its too risky for the exchanges, but wouldn't be surprised that exchanges…

ETH PoS includes offline penalties proportional to the % of the network that goes down.

If your home RasPi validator drops you don't lose much. If 25% of users stake on coinbase and _they_ go down the penalties are much higher.

So there's an incentive to validate on your own hardware/connection.

Re: Mainnet Merge Announcement

#199

Post by chizhik-pyzhik »

spywaregorilla wrote: post #192
drcode wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 ca…

What if they then show bogus evidence

There's no such thing as bogus evidence. Block signatures are validated cryptographically

Re: Mainnet Merge Announcement

#200

Post by drog »

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…

There is no designated class of slashers.

Slashing is part of the protocol and to slash somebody you have to prove it to the protocol that they broke rules of slashing. One of the rules is that you can't create two different blocks in the same slot (block number) i.e. you can't deliberately fork.

There is a designated place in the block of the beacon chain where you can put signatures of the different blocks in the same slot as a proof and nodes will slash validator that produced that signatures (update his balance). Anyone can find these signatures, and block proposers of the new blocks will include them into the chain.

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