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The Ethereum merge is done

coindesk.com

131–140 of 1001 posts

Re: The Ethereum merge is done

#131
Curious to see if this plays out anything like the insider lockup period expiring after an IPO.

Anyone with ETH locked up in a 2.0 beacon validator has suffered brutal drawdowns from the peak.

Re: The Ethereum merge is done

#132
post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I do find it interesting that people hate on crypto for its energy consumption but ignore all the other wasteful computation.

No one will ever say anything bad about game consoles, which consume much more electricity than cryptocurrencies =)

PoW is different to all other categories of energy usage and should be feared more. Ill let you have a think about what the reason for this is. If you need a hint, read the bitcoin whitepaper.

Re: The Ethereum merge is done

#133
post #28

> The Merge is one of the largest technological events in the industry to date. I feel kinda ashamed. I work in the IT industry and I claim to have knowledge about ("good") software engineering practices, distributed systems, compilers, algorithms, etc. Nevertheless, I didn't understand a word of what the article is saying. Could you recommend serious references (preferably books and not random blogs) I could read to…

Mastering Ethereum is pretty good

Came out about 4 years ago

Re: The Ethereum merge is done

#134
post #28

> The Merge is one of the largest technological events in the industry to date. I feel kinda ashamed. I work in the IT industry and I claim to have knowledge about ("good") software engineering practices, distributed systems, compilers, algorithms, etc. Nevertheless, I didn't understand a word of what the article is saying. Could you recommend serious references (preferably books and not random blogs) I could read to…

I wouldnt worry, the whole system up to this point has used "technobabble" as a means to confuse and impress outsiders. When reading up on it, there is no meaning to find besides "yep, its a linked list allright".

bonk

Re: The Ethereum merge is done

#135
post #76
post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

PoW incentivizes renewable energy development. It's certainly not rolling it back. It used to also incentivize GPU production, but as of today that has been diminished as well. Instead it is only current asset holders who reap the rewards. EDIT: Edited to include at least one source on the connections between PoW and renewable energy. This just scratches the surface though. https://squareup.com/us/en/press/bcei-white…

> PoW incentivizes renewable energy development. PoW incentivizes energy development. And then proceeds to use it all up on PoW. It's a paperclip optimizer, except the fitness function is how much power it can waste. > It used to also incentivize GPU production And then proceeds to use it all up on PoW. It's a paperclip optimizer, except the fitness function is how much e-waste it can produce. It's for these reasons…

> The only downside of course being that it essentially hard-codes the "1% of people make 99% of the money" principle.

This is only true if the only or best way to make money is through staking. This is unlikely to be the case - the ability to deposit your cash in a savings account or park it in government bonds doesn't stop people from investing in stocks. What it does instead is put a floor on acceptable rates of return from more risky options.

Re: The Ethereum merge is done

#136
post #91

For those interested in understanding the tech rather than the typical bashing things as beneath them, I wrote up a detailed technical explainer of how Ethereum PoS works: https://0xfoobar.substack.com/p/ethereum-proof-of-stake

What's Substack? Is that new Medium?

It's like Medium but wants you to pay for newsletters.

Re: The Ethereum merge is done

#137
post #28

> The Merge is one of the largest technological events in the industry to date. I feel kinda ashamed. I work in the IT industry and I claim to have knowledge about ("good") software engineering practices, distributed systems, compilers, algorithms, etc. Nevertheless, I didn't understand a word of what the article is saying. Could you recommend serious references (preferably books and not random blogs) I could read to…

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YQ_xWvX1n9g

Re: The Ethereum merge is done

#138
post #35

The validator of the first proof of stake block earned just over 45 ETH as everyone clamored to get their transaction in this historic block: https://etherscan.io/block/15537394

The validator is randomly chosen, no? So we essentially have a lottery as a banking system now?

That was true with proof of work too. The merge doesn't change it.

Re: The Ethereum merge is done

#140

This doesn't really change anything, I still cannot find any legitimate use cases for blockchain, Proof of Stake or not. I would happy to be proven wrong, but this is extremely rare as I can't find any legitimate actual useful use case since Bitcoin and Ethereum's existence.

As someone pointed out to me recently when I argued the same thing, crypto and blockchain does have a use case: funding organizations and people through anonymous means as to circumvent the scope of the law/avoid the eyes of state or corporate authorities. This includes funding politically persecuted groups or terrorist groups as well as buying drugs or other more or less recommendable things. After all it's mostly what it's been used for so far (if we ignore speculation and various scams).

I think it's hard to argue with this.

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