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Mainnet Merge Announcement

blog.ethereum.org

371–380 of 609 posts

Re: Mainnet Merge Announcement

#371

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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. If that 67% is also true of the slasher voting protocol, then that means you just need 33% of th…

> just need 33% of the network to avoid being slashed. Is that wrong? Yes, it is wrong.

How is it wrong? If you need 67% consensus to approve a transaction, and slashing is a transaction, then you can prevent slashing with 33%. What's incorrect about that reasoning?

Re: Mainnet Merge Announcement

#373
post #228

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Never. PoW is a fundamental part of what makes bitcoin valuable.

It's also fundamentally limits the growth potential of BTC. In a PoW system, the amount of work done must be proportional to the total value of all BTC (if not, it would make 51% attacks feasible). So if BTC uses an Argentina's worth of energy now, if the value of BTC grew 10X it would have to use on the order of 10 Argentina's worth of electricity. Obviously, that is not sustainable, and it ensures BTC can never gro…

> In a PoW system, the amount of work done must be proportional to the total value of all BTC (if not, it would make 51% attacks feasible).

I’m confused. Why must this be the case and how would it lead to a 51% attack if it were not?

I know the difficult goes up when the price goes up because more people are able to mine profitably and the system will automatically scale the difficulty to maintain the 1 block per 10 minutes rate, but I don’t understand what the difficultly being proportional to value has to do with 51% attacks being feasible.

Re: Mainnet Merge Announcement

#374

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…

You appear to have contradicted yourself? >So some people may choose to not include some transactions (Ethermine is already doing this on PoW with Tornado Cash). But there is no mechanism that slashes your staked coins because the other validators didn't like what transactions you included. >PoS is in fact even more resistant because in PoS you can kick out the malicious validators by doing a social fork that slashes…

What I think he means is that there is no in-protocol mechanism for slashing a censoring validator.

But you can reach a social consensus (i.e. outside the protocol) and decide to slash the censors. At that point there would be effectively two different chains, the censored one and an uncensored one. The worth of each chain would be decided by market dynamics.

Re: Mainnet Merge Announcement

#375

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> just need 33% of the network to avoid being slashed. Is that wrong? Yes, it is wrong.

How is it wrong? If you need 67% consensus to approve a transaction, and slashing is a transaction, then you can prevent slashing with 33%. What's incorrect about that reasoning?

You won't be prevent slashing with 1/3, you will be merely delaying the block production each time is is proposed. Every time your 1/3 of the nodes attempt maliciously delays of production of a valid block, you will be slashed, and then you won't have 1/3 of the required funds at stake anymore.

Re: Mainnet Merge Announcement

#377

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Lower consumption works even better than cleaner energy. Even wind/solar/nuclear has a carbon cost to it. PoS consumes less energy than PoW. That's a win.

> Even wind/solar/nuclear has a carbon cost to it. Yeah, so does life.

But the point here is that if there are easy ways to reduce energy usage, that have few drawbacks, then that is a good thing to get that free lunch.

Re: Mainnet Merge Announcement

#378
post #359

Has there been any resolution to the issues raised in https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1560070819518234624.html ? My reading of the concerns is that USDC has effective fork veto, and that with PoS the chain would be subject to OFAC, which would effectively destroy it. (my reading may well be incorrect / the concerns irrelevant)

If being subject to OFAC oversight would "destroy" Ethereum, then Ethereum should be destroyed.

Re: Mainnet Merge Announcement

#380
post #366

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You’re joking right?

Am I joking about the quantities of money that working families will spend on unnecessary stuff instead of investments while complaining about the inability to secure their financial futures? I am not.

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