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Ethereum just activated its ‘London’ hard fork

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Re: Ethereum just activated its ‘London’ hard fork

#111
post #6

Can someone explain to me how PoS is not centralized? The whole point of crypto and the blockchain is decentralization, no? I feel like crypto/blockchain will end up looking nothing like how it was intended, and be regulated to the point that it's just the next iteration of the traditional banking system, where the current power holders continue holding the power. Maybe I was naive to ever think it would be any diffe…

PoS should be less centralized than PoW as I understand it. At least in Ethereum if you stake your 32 ETH then you get transactions to validate assigned to you randomly. You don't need a purpose-built rig with a ton of hash power to compete so smaller players are incentivized to participate, leading to a far greater incentive to run a node.

> You don't need a purpose-built rig with a ton of hash power to compete

But you do need ETH in the first place, and the more the better. This seems like it still disincentivizes smaller players.

Re: Ethereum just activated its ‘London’ hard fork

#112

If Ethereum can hard fork like this, it stands to reason as well that the 21 Million Bitcoin limit is a lot more changeable than Bitcoin proponents would say. Or the opposite is true - and Ethereum is under heavily centralized control.

All blockchains are controlled by rough consensus. There's already like half a dozen Bitcoin forks in the wild (Bitcoin Cash, BSV, etc). When Bitcoin Cash forked off from the main chain in 2017, the community ultimately decided which chain was the "legitimate" one. Of course Bitcoin could decide to increase the issuance. In doing so, however, it would inevitably lead to a fork (with the 21M holdouts in one camp and t…

Good explanation.

Imo the block size wars was the beginning of the end for Bitcoin. I chose the chain most hashed and it's only now that I realize that Bitcoin gave up on growing and improving at that point.

Bch is a joke, PoW just doesn't work unless you're the biggest game in town. BTC is shackled to staying incredibly conservative.

Re: Ethereum just activated its ‘London’ hard fork

#114

What are the current best estimates for the timeline of the proof-of-stake transition?

The next hard fork/upgrade has to happen before December 2021, that's when the difficulty bomb needs to be moved again.

It's unlikely that it'll happen that early, but iirc PoS is now the biggest priority

Re: Ethereum just activated its ‘London’ hard fork

#115

If Ethereum can hard fork like this, it stands to reason as well that the 21 Million Bitcoin limit is a lot more changeable than Bitcoin proponents would say. Or the opposite is true - and Ethereum is under heavily centralized control.

All blockchains are controlled by rough consensus. There's already like half a dozen Bitcoin forks in the wild (Bitcoin Cash, BSV, etc). When Bitcoin Cash forked off from the main chain in 2017, the community ultimately decided which chain was the "legitimate" one. Of course Bitcoin could decide to increase the issuance. In doing so, however, it would inevitably lead to a fork (with the 21M holdouts in one camp and t…

I agree with all of this - but the conclusion I reach is that proponents of Bitcoin are lying when they say it's unchangeable and certainly deflationary, or digital gold. It's changeable if people want it to change.

Re: Ethereum just activated its ‘London’ hard fork

#116

If Ethereum can hard fork like this, it stands to reason as well that the 21 Million Bitcoin limit is a lot more changeable than Bitcoin proponents would say. Or the opposite is true - and Ethereum is under heavily centralized control.

> it stands to reason

No it doesn't. You're comparing something with no advantage to the people who are invested in Bitcoin to something which is meant to objectively improve Ethereum and a majority can agree upon.

Re: Ethereum just activated its ‘London’ hard fork

#117
post #113

Gas fees becoming more predictable is nice, but the fact they can get so large for small transactions is quite frustrating. I wanted to swap a bunch of coins worth 8$ into another token and the gas fees were around 28$, which is just insane.

Yeah, unfortunately the main chain will likely be this bad until all the shards are executing shards. You'll need to go to an L2 until that happens

Re: Ethereum just activated its ‘London’ hard fork

#118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ethereum is so enthusiastic about hard forks (or in ETH speak, upgrades) that they have the difficulty bomb which works like the debt ceiling. It's necessary to do a hard fork/upgrade every so often. Meanwhile bitcoin is so against hard forks/upgrades that they can basically only do soft forks and currently do that by a 90% voting agreement by miners. Bitcoin can not even increase the blocksize, the sure as hell aren…

So the personal beliefs of users decide the technical future of the project. Personal beliefs and culture can change rapidly, or become overshadowed by new users. It just means that Bitcoin is only unchangeable because of the current whims of current users - nothing fundamental.

It was never meant to be fundamentally unchangeable.

Re: Ethereum just activated its ‘London’ hard fork

#119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ethereum is so enthusiastic about hard forks (or in ETH speak, upgrades) that they have the difficulty bomb which works like the debt ceiling. It's necessary to do a hard fork/upgrade every so often. Meanwhile bitcoin is so against hard forks/upgrades that they can basically only do soft forks and currently do that by a 90% voting agreement by miners. Bitcoin can not even increase the blocksize, the sure as hell aren…

So the personal beliefs of users decide the technical future of the project. Personal beliefs and culture can change rapidly, or become overshadowed by new users. It just means that Bitcoin is only unchangeable because of the current whims of current users - nothing fundamental.

Humans decide the technical future of every project. The difference is which specific humans, how many, how they are selected, how they are incentivized etc.
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