211–220 of 1001 posts
I have no problem with weird nerds having their own hobbies (I have a model train set!) as long as they are not actively hurting anyone.
Now do the same for bitcoin.
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.
> I still cannot find any legitimate use cases for blockchain Blockchains solve the double-spend problem. Allows for scarcity in the digital realm. Ethereum is a platform for decentralized finance, anyone can borderlessly lend and borrow in seconds. Endless possibilities.
There are two interesting things I want to watch from this. The first is I'm interested to see what kind of bull run ETH goes on. The merge has been incredibly long coming, it has huge risks and I think that puts downward pressure on price, you really don't want to be doing stuff in ETH at the moment because there's a fairly good chance something goes wrong, someone stealds $XBn and runs off and the Ethereum guys go…
The fact that the vast majority expects a bull run means that it's very likely it will crash instead.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Ethereum isn't supposed to be money (though it can be), it's fuel you use for doing other things. Do people use less oil because it's deflationary and gets consumed when used? No, because it's useful now. The most likely end game for Ethereum is being a replacement for all backend financial systems. Instead of having to hire teams of people to verify things or integrate various legacy systems together, everyone can b…
Banks would never switch to a system that makes all transactions publicly traceable, and they shouldn't. The industry has investigated blockchains for many years, since distributed consensus for transactions is a problem they actually have. They might run their own private chains. But it won't be ETH.
Conceptually, a service provider utilizing Ethereum could create or aggregate on-chain services and package them in a similar format to what a bank is today with very little overhead.
I like the idea of a non-PoW blockchain, and I don't mind taking some risks, but before I invest $60k in becoming a validator, I'd like to know what the potential payback might be.
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.
the easiest use case to grok (and one that's being used right now) is a near-instant global settlement layer e.g. startups today are able to accept funds in USDC[0] without the hassle + cost of sending/receiving a wire transfer or waiting up to 2 weeks for an ACH to clear. Another interesting use case is tracking provenance for physical goods. e.g. the ownership history of a bottle of whiskey[1] or wine[2] [0] - http…
The ability to send money instantly from any regular bank account to any other regular bank account, without any fees, that's what we should aim for.
Cryptocurrencies do this worse than the existing banking tech (e.g., the mentioned SEPA ICT).
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
I find the complexity of that algorithm both impressive ( since they seem to have made it work), but also quite worrying. I'm really not sure how such a beast can't be filled with bugs, not in the implementation but rather in the protocol. I know a lot of very smart people are working on this, but i'd rather have something conceptually simpler to work as the base layer for a whole new economy.
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?
> 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…
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…
PoW means there can now be a buyer of last resort no matter when and where you are generating power. Newly developed renewable based electricity can be sold at "x" price when there is residential or commercial demand, and at "y" price (y In this scenario there may not have been enough demand at price "x" to finance the renewable development, but the PoW buyer of last resort makes it feasible.