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Mainnet Merge Announcement

blog.ethereum.org

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Re: Mainnet Merge Announcement

#261

Post by tboyd47 »

remram wrote: post #180
tboyd47 wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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% can do double-spend in Bitcoin, e.g. they can undo entire blocks of transactions and spend that money again. They can also prevent you from getting your transaction in ever . The 49% cannot prevent this because they cannot make a longer chain, that is the entire point of proof-of-work.

Adding the double-spend concept into it makes it even more silly. If you are changing the validation rules of Bitcoin to allow double-spend, then your block is rejected by the entire network and you must fork, even if you had 99% of the hashpower.

Re: Mainnet Merge Announcement

#262

Post by Zetaphor »

spywaregorilla wrote: post #163
jsheard wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Nothing, nothing happens. You can't just lie about slashing, the term "proof" is being used in the computational sense.

The submission you're describing requires a cryptographic proof of that validator submitting two or more existing invalid blocks that they signed. You can't just falsify that without their private keys, so what you're suggesting is not possible.

Re: Mainnet Merge Announcement

#263

Post by bowsamic »

leppr wrote: post #74
bowsamic wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 fav…

I don’t really care I’m just saying how it looks from the outside

Re: Mainnet Merge Announcement

#264

Post by rglullis »

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?

If you control 51% of the network (actually, with Ethereum PoS that number is 67%, as you need 2/3 of the validators to control consensus) and people know you are malicious, people will abandon the network and you will lose your investment because no one is interested in participating in a network controlled by a crook.

It's no different from what would happen in PoW. Can you please stop with the concern trolling?

Re: Mainnet Merge Announcement

#265

Post by 3np »

cesarb wrote: post #223
3np wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just the one I think? Sure there have been network and client issues at times but that goes for Bitcoin as well.

I believe there were more than that one. From what I've read some time ago, to prevent the Ethereum 1 (proof-of-work) chain from continuing to exist after the migration to the Ethereum 2 (proof-of-stake) chain, the Ethereum 1 protocol has a built-in "difficulty bomb" which dramatically increases the proof-of-work difficulty after some time. But since the migration to Ethereum 2 has been delayed for so long, they've h…

This was always (well, long enough) a part of the plan and openly communicated. Dropping or changing difficulty bomb does not depend on the EF or the client software maintainers. Dropping or extending it preemptively would be trivial and would have been done already if there weren't consensus to keep it in place. It's in everyone's interest that nodes stay up to date if the network is to evolve and without it there would probably be a couple of years more until the merge that is scheduled for next month.

The first difficulty bomb was never set with the intention that this would be the move to PoS. It's a conscious choice to introduce regular hard forks in order to keep the protocol and network evolving.

It looks very likely that some percentage of node operators and miners will patch out the bomb this time, which will result in the PoW side of the fork staying alive. Which side of the chain retains monetary value in their tokens is up to social consensus. It will probably differ from protocol to protocol. So far industry and most major exchanges have been aligned with the rest of the Ethereum community here.

What you're saying is mostly correct but seems taken out of context. I've only ever seen people looking in from the outside have strong opinions on this particular point, not from the actual stakeholders involved.

Re: Mainnet Merge Announcement

#266

Post by proto-n »

tboyd47 wrote: post #232
proto-n wrote: post #183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They are not hard-forking, it will be compatible with the original chain and original rules. There will be two competing forks, one censored, one not censored, and the censored one is longer (because 51%). Consensus rules say longer chain is valid. So it _is_ the official "bitcoin", according to consensus rules. The 51% attack is not some made up thing.

If 51% of miners decide to totally ignore the other 49% then their chain will most definitely not be the longest chain for any more than 30 minutes. Because the 49% are still using 100% of miners' work. The only way they can maintain that chain is by a hard fork.

Let me make sure I get this right: if you have two chains, one is mined by 49% hash power, the other is mined by 51% hash power, you think the 51% one won't be the longer one?

Re: Mainnet Merge Announcement

#267

Post by Zetaphor »

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

This would require forging the existence of an invalid block signed with the key of the validator you're claiming should be slashed, which is not possible

Re: Mainnet Merge Announcement

#268

Post by pa7x1 »

shudza wrote: post #41
bowsamic wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

$52,800 is a pittance compared to any remotely significant mining operation

you don't need mining equipment to validate transactions on bitcoin, nor do you need to own it. With ETH, you need to own 32 ETH, obviously.

Absolutely not the case. You can verify the transactions without owning any ETH, you cannot participate in the reward process for your efforts though for that you need to be a validators and put up your stake.

The parallel with Bitcoin is quite strong. You can run a Bitcoin node without running a miner and verify the chain but you don't get rewarded. You can run an Ethereum node without staking and verify the chain but you don't get rewarded.

Re: Mainnet Merge Announcement

#269

Post by MR4D »

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…

Who slashes the Slashers? (with apologies to The Watchmen)

EDIT: Clarification - once a slasher posts the violation, who removes the ether?

Re: Mainnet Merge Announcement

#270

Post by tboyd47 »

gus_massa wrote: post #257
tboyd47 wrote: post #232

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If 51% of miners decide to totally ignore the other 49% then their chain will most definitely not be the longest chain for any more than 30 minutes. Because the 49% are still using 100% of miners' work. The only way they can maintain that chain is by a hard fork.

It's easier to explain a 66% attract. The censored chain produce the double of blocks of the censored one. Each time the uncensored chain produce a block it's ignored by the censored one. So after a time, they are behind and have to jump to the other chain and ignore their own old blocks. Something like this graph: Censored blocks: - Uncensored Fork blocks: \ Uncensored Normal blocks: * Censored: *-------------------…

So, now that I've obliterated the 51% attack idea, shall we move on to 66% attack?

It doesn't matter if it's a 90% attack. The minority miners are constantly receiving and using the majority's blocks. So it is not 66% vs. 33%, or 90% vs. 10%; it is 60% vs. 100% and 90% vs. 100%.

All it takes is for the less-restrictive minority to mine two blocks in a row and they've permanently outpaced the majority's more restrictive chain.

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