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The Ethereum merge is done

coindesk.com

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Re: The Ethereum merge is done

#451

Post by Waterluvian »

ineedasername wrote: post #444

Prior to the merge ethereum’s trust was controlled by the organizations with the most money who bought/built massive data centers to mine it. With the merge & staking that abstraction layer has disappeared and it’s still the organizations with the most money who control it. Sure it’s great that non-productive math problems no longer need to be solved & consume so much energy and hardware to make it all work. And it m…

Not using up a goat load of electricity is like 99% of why this change is great. Let people speculate on their funny money without harming everyone. A lateral move on the other details is rather unsurprising.

Re: The Ethereum merge is done

#452

Post by tcgv »

lmarcos wrote: 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'm not planning to "buy" crypto; I would like to understand the technicalities.

That's been my entrance into crypto as well. I really dislike the speculative, get-rich-quick, even casino like connotation crypto has (inevitably) acquired. It shades the incredible technology behind it.

For a couple of years I have been studying and playing around with smart contracts in my free time, getting a better understanding of this paradigm (every smart contract can be seen as a singleton object "living" in the blockchain, with functions that are like API endpoints which you can interact with in a decentralized fashion), how it shapes applications built on top of it, and the possibilities ahead of us (ex: DeFi - Decentralized Finance).

There's a lot of skepticism around crypto, like "it's a solution without a problem", but I don't buy it. Even if it were, it's a solution sophisticated, interesting enough, worth diving yourself into ;)

Re: The Ethereum merge is done

#453

Post by max51 »

funklute wrote: post #277
phartenfeller wrote: post #273

I appreciate it wasting less precious energy. But this change also means that "Decentralisation" and "Power to the people" are fading away right? The wealthy actors are the ones dictating the transaction now and they also on top get paid for being rich. This does not sound like a "better financial system" for me. Also, don't forget the DAO Fork[0] where with the "ungovernable Blockhain" it was decided a transaction w…

> But this change also means that "Decentralisation" and "Power to the people" are fading away right? But it was always like this, also with proof of work. PoS and PoW are both just variations of "proof of resources", which in turn is a convenient substitution for likelihood that one's voting power is independent. If you want to give "power to the people", you need some way of estimating independent voting power, tha…

With proof of work, you have to spend your pile of money if you want to influence a vote. Whatever the cost of a 51% "attack" would be, the attacker has to actually spend that money to do it.

With proof of stake, having that money is enough to vote and you don't need to spend or waste it. In fact, you get paid for having that money sitting in the account.

Re: The Ethereum merge is done

#454

Post by agentultra »

Now they're going to pay for the damage done to the environment for the last six years that they've profited off of, right? No? Oh okay so it doesn't matter. I guess the miners have stopped operations, sold off their businesses, and moved on then.

Trouble is that governments and regulators are cracking down. I don't think it will be long before the SEC finally makes moves that will blanket label cryptocurrencies as securities. And we will see more arrests and trials. Once NFTs and web3 and everything else is wiped off the market I doubt there will be much left here.

It's always been a solution in search of a problem.

Update To clarify, what I'm saying is that the environmental angle here of using less energy isn't a concern for the Ethereum project. If the merge didn't work and they had to delay again they wouldn't have hesitated to delay again and continue burning energy on PoW at all. And they're not going to pay reparations for the damage they have already done because that's not what this is about, is it?

Re: The Ethereum merge is done

#455

Post by kevinak »

konschubert wrote: post #438
Yizahi wrote: post #366

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And it will be the same group of people until the thermal death of the universe, because there are literally no mechanisms to separate those wallets from the tokens. The ultimate feudalism.

Just like with Bitcoin.

No.

Re: The Ethereum merge is done

#456

Post by ReactiveJelly »

sbt wrote: post #374
funklute wrote: post #277

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> But this change also means that "Decentralisation" and "Power to the people" are fading away right? But it was always like this, also with proof of work. PoS and PoW are both just variations of "proof of resources", which in turn is a convenient substitution for likelihood that one's voting power is independent. If you want to give "power to the people", you need some way of estimating independent voting power, tha…

> If you want to give "power to the people", you need some way of estimating independent voting power, that is not tied to resources. You mean like a democracy?

Hard to implement a democracy without any authority to prove that I'm 1 person with 1 vote and not 100 people with 100 votes.

Re: The Ethereum merge is done

#458

Post by Slartie »

franky47 wrote: post #439

Quote from the article: > “I feel very proud, you know, that I'll be able to look back and say I've had a role to play in removing a megaton of carbon from the atmosphere every week." -- Edgington There's a very important difference in not emitting carbon into the atmosphere and actively removing carbon from the atmosphere. Both are critically necessary and complementary, but I don't see how Edgington thinks that swi…

Especially since the carbon emissions of Ethereum were a product of Ethereum's existence in the first place, hence an entirely self-made problem, produced by the very people developing and pushing the platform.

It's a lot like someone being an active part of a group of gangsters taking hostages, then turning around and helping the police freeing them, only to then brag about how proud he/she is of having a role in freeing those poor innocent people.

Re: The Ethereum merge is done

#459

Post by TimJRobinson »

threeseed wrote: post #319
TimJRobinson wrote: post #99

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…

Curious how many banks you've worked for. I've worked for a couple. And they pride themselves on differentiating themselves in the market by offering specialised products and services. Not sure why a bank would deliberately want to turn themselves into the equivalent of a reseller.

Do those banks use AWS now? Did they fight it with many justifications of why bare metal is better and cheaper and more efficient before finally realising it's holding them back? Because that's what happened in every company I worked in and that same thing is going to happen to every company working in finance.

In a capitalistic world efficiency comes before pride or your shareholders replace you.

Re: The Ethereum merge is done

#460

Post by jqpabc123 »

franky47 wrote: post #439

Quote from the article: > “I feel very proud, you know, that I'll be able to look back and say I've had a role to play in removing a megaton of carbon from the atmosphere every week." -- Edgington There's a very important difference in not emitting carbon into the atmosphere and actively removing carbon from the atmosphere. Both are critically necessary and complementary, but I don't see how Edgington thinks that swi…

He's not saying it is "carbon-negative" --- he's saying it is more efficient and avoids a megaton of carbon that would otherwise have been released.
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