Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

The Ethereum merge is done

coindesk.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

581–590 of 1001 posts

Re: The Ethereum merge is done

#581

Post by OccamsMirror »

JeremyNT wrote: post #579
sfjailbird wrote: post #526

This thread is HN jumping the shark for me. The merge is freaking incredible. Switching the engine of a $60 billion financial network in-flight. Permanent power savings the scale of a country. An incredible coordination between a huge number of diverse parties all over the world. Everything open source. And all we get is a rehash of tired old arguments against cryptocurrencies. This was originally a forum for hackers…

So we now have a technical marvel used for financial speculation, conducting illicit transactions, and dodging regulators... that no longer is also burning the planet. Am I supposed to be impressed by this? It's easy to worship engineering as some kind of pure endeavor divorced from the real world, and admire cleverness for its own sake. But things that actively make the world worse should not necessarily be praised,…

No post body was provided.

Re: The Ethereum merge is done

#582

Post by root_axis »

sfjailbird wrote: post #526

This thread is HN jumping the shark for me. The merge is freaking incredible. Switching the engine of a $60 billion financial network in-flight. Permanent power savings the scale of a country. An incredible coordination between a huge number of diverse parties all over the world. Everything open source. And all we get is a rehash of tired old arguments against cryptocurrencies. This was originally a forum for hackers…

Cryptocurrency jumped the shark long ago and this comment section is a reflection of that. Claiming that people aren't real hackers because they don't uncritically slurp up cryptocurrency hype isn't doing your cause any favors.

Re: The Ethereum merge is done

#583

Post by 1023bytes »

neprotivo wrote: post #457

It looks like the new Blockchain is quite centralized. 45% of blocks are mined by just two addresses: https://twitter.com/santimentfeed/status/1570339602346684416...

The top address belongs to Lido finance

https://github.com/lidofinance/docs/blob/main/docs/deployed-...

https://lido.fi/ethereum

Re: The Ethereum merge is done

#584

Post by Psyladine »

motoxpro wrote: post #578
smoldesu wrote: post #538

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is still a forum for hackers, makers and entrepreneurs. We just don't accept Monopoly Money as compensation for work rendered.

> We just don't accept Monopoly Money as compensation for work rendered. Every person that took equity in a startup that then went out of business would love to talk with you. Believing bitcoin will be valuable for some people isn't really any different than believing pets.com will be successful or that tesla will actually be able to make electric cars and taking equity instead of cash for compensation.

In the sense that there isn't any difference in spending your annual salary on lottery tickets instead of food. Before you balk, I point you at the handful of winners who raked in billions, a ROI most of these "food eaters" could only dream of.

Re: The Ethereum merge is done

#585

Post by mratsim »

JeremyNT wrote: post #579
sfjailbird wrote: post #526

This thread is HN jumping the shark for me. The merge is freaking incredible. Switching the engine of a $60 billion financial network in-flight. Permanent power savings the scale of a country. An incredible coordination between a huge number of diverse parties all over the world. Everything open source. And all we get is a rehash of tired old arguments against cryptocurrencies. This was originally a forum for hackers…

So we now have a technical marvel used for financial speculation, conducting illicit transactions, and dodging regulators... that no longer is also burning the planet. Am I supposed to be impressed by this? It's easy to worship engineering as some kind of pure endeavor divorced from the real world, and admire cleverness for its own sake. But things that actively make the world worse should not necessarily be praised,…

> used for financial speculation, conducting illicit transactions, and dodging regulators...

https://decrypt.co/66411/cia-bitcoin-surveillance

> Michael Morell, who was previously the CIA’s acting director, said in ‘An Analysis of Bitcoin’s Use in Illicit Finance’ that “blockchain technology is a powerful but underutilized forensic tool for governments to identify illicit activity and bring criminals to justice.”

> Tracking illicit Bitcoin transactions is therefore easier than tracing illegal funds moved across borders using “traditional banking transactions” and “far easier” than trying to follow cash, according to the report.

> One source in the report was quoted saying that “if all criminals used blockchain, we could wipe out illicit financial activity.”

TL;DR cash is a better tool for crime according to an ex CIA director

Re: The Ethereum merge is done

#586

Post by fourstar »

smoldesu wrote: post #538
sfjailbird wrote: post #526

This thread is HN jumping the shark for me. The merge is freaking incredible. Switching the engine of a $60 billion financial network in-flight. Permanent power savings the scale of a country. An incredible coordination between a huge number of diverse parties all over the world. Everything open source. And all we get is a rehash of tired old arguments against cryptocurrencies. This was originally a forum for hackers…

This is still a forum for hackers, makers and entrepreneurs. We just don't accept Monopoly Money as compensation for work rendered.

>we

Speak for yourself, noob.

Re: The Ethereum merge is done

#587

Post by aliqot »

adhoc_slime wrote: post #533
sfjailbird wrote: post #526

This thread is HN jumping the shark for me. The merge is freaking incredible. Switching the engine of a $60 billion financial network in-flight. Permanent power savings the scale of a country. An incredible coordination between a huge number of diverse parties all over the world. Everything open source. And all we get is a rehash of tired old arguments against cryptocurrencies. This was originally a forum for hackers…

To be fair, the article talks about none of that and focuses on the high-level traders perspective. I'd bet that a write up of the process of the merge would be a huge hit on HN.

I want to have the same faith as you, but I've been here since y2, and it has seldom been positive. I get it, I'm in the same field of research and can't stand what traders have done to the industry.

0. In the beginning we had no legitimacy, so we courted regulators and current financial types in as a means of legitimacy by proxy.

1. Those financial types and regulators who had open minds joined, shenanigans ensued, and we saw a replaying of all the dirty tricks that were outlawed in traditional markets like front-running.

2. Then fast forward to where we are now; industry types who came in early are making a killing and funding legislation like New York's BitLicense, which pushes toward centralization by outlawing participation for 'unaccreddited' types like the nerds who built this whole shindig.

For folks like me who just want to build distributed systems and tackle issues like consensus, it's hard to be taken seriously, because we're all just trying to do our work but we're trapped in this casino where there's starting to be more pinky rings than poker chips and it's only getting worse.

Re: The Ethereum merge is done

#588

Post by polezo »

neprotivo wrote: post #457

It looks like the new Blockchain is quite centralized. 45% of blocks are mined by just two addresses: https://twitter.com/santimentfeed/status/1570339602346684416...

Those are staking pools, which represent thousands of individual users, and the largest one (LIDO) also has has additional decentralization that is not well captured by looking at just reward address. The reward address is a contract that individual users will be able to tap into.

Worth adding it's also not substantially less decentralized than PoW mining was, the status quo was 41% of hash power controlled by 2 pools. At least now it's using significantly less power and is largely more non-custodial.

Re: The Ethereum merge is done

#589

Post by mratsim »

kranke155 wrote: post #555
sfjailbird wrote: post #526

This thread is HN jumping the shark for me. The merge is freaking incredible. Switching the engine of a $60 billion financial network in-flight. Permanent power savings the scale of a country. An incredible coordination between a huge number of diverse parties all over the world. Everything open source. And all we get is a rehash of tired old arguments against cryptocurrencies. This was originally a forum for hackers…

I’ve given up on HN understating crypto before they mint some Giga unicorn and everyone understand where the future is. The hive mind here is dangerously anti crypto. It’s the biggest wealth producing opportunity of the next decade or two and HN doesn’t get it at all. It’s basically become a forum for your average developer. I’d bet a lot of folk who don’t understand crypto at all are web developers or something wher…

> a forum for your average developer

The average developer doesn't use Rust

Re: The Ethereum merge is done

#590

Post by ilaksh »

LtWorf wrote: post #369
ilaksh wrote: post #183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The main use case for a block chain is to ensure that a ledger is valid and not tampered with. The reason we want public ledgers is to keep track of financial transactions securely. Why can't we just use a bank? At some level there needs to be security for the bank's database. Blockchains are generally considered the best way to do this. So when legacy financial databases are replaced in recent years blockchains are…

Blockchains are certainly not the best way to do that. All the hash try and error is completely useless and put there just to create "value".

What do you think is a better way?
Post reply on HN