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Ethereum Has Issues

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Re: Ethereum Has Issues

#111

Post by Raidion »

jerry1979 wrote: post #84
jmyeet wrote: post #51

So Crypto Andys like to hand-wave about the risk of a 51% attack but consider this: > This is in addition to the long-standing concentration of Ethereum mining power, with normally three and sometimes only two mining pools controlling over 50% of the mining power. There is further hand-waving about how Proof-of-Stake (over Proof-of-Waste) will magically fix these problems. But it's actually this PoW computing power t…

What is a Crypto Andy?

Andy is a fairly new and derogatory/tongue in cheek term (from twitch, long story) that basically means people that get attention from jumping on someone else's creative bandwagon.

Basically someone else does the creation, and you become an Andy by trying to get involved without really adding much value.

Re: Ethereum Has Issues

#112

Post by thebean11 »

danans wrote: post #105
thebean11 wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For sure, DeFi loans aren't practical at the moment (for anything but speculation), and may never be practical for something like a mortgage or even a credit card. I still find it pretty mind blowing that an algorithm can loan me money. For insurance I don't agree. Something basic like weather insurance (widely used in agriculture) is already possible. The hardest part is getting the weather information onchain in a…

> The hardest part is getting the weather information onchain in a way that's trusted by the buyers and sellers of the insurance. So the hardest part is trust, the very thing that blockchains supposedly make unnecessary?

People get touchy about the word "trust" in blockchain threads. Would it help if I said that the hardest part is creating a way to get the weather data on chain that the buyer and seller can agree on ahead of time?

Anyway, I'm obviously not claiming this can work without input from humans off chain. My point is that the infrastructure needed to get clean and honest weather data on to the chain (which requires human inputs) is much smaller than the entire infrastructure needed to administer weather insurance (which other than the previous part, can be done autonomously).

Re: Ethereum Has Issues

#113

Post by thebean11 »

WJW wrote: post #80
thebean11 wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For sure, DeFi loans aren't practical at the moment (for anything but speculation), and may never be practical for something like a mortgage or even a credit card. I still find it pretty mind blowing that an algorithm can loan me money. For insurance I don't agree. Something basic like weather insurance (widely used in agriculture) is already possible. The hardest part is getting the weather information onchain in a…

> I still find it pretty mind blowing that an algorithm can loan me money. Algorithmic lending has been a thing for decades though. What do you think a credit score is for if not a tool to let computers decide whether to give you credit or not?

An algorithm might help decide who to lend to, but the algorithm isn't actually lending the money. You aren't paying the algorithm back. Pretty big difference there.

Re: Ethereum Has Issues

#114

Post by pshc »

rufusroflpunch wrote: post #101
pshc wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Staking pays all stakers out proportional to their stake, which is as fair as is possible, and more fair than PoW. Distributed staking pools lower the barrier to entry to 0.01 ETH. Ethereum will still be printing ETH in perpetuity; it only becomes deflationary whenever more is burned than printed.

> Staking pays all stakers out proportional to their stake, which is as fair as is possible, and more fair than PoW. Distributed staking pools lower the barrier to entry to 0.01 ETH. This doesn't change the economics of what I said, which are about opportunity cost of staking vs. spending. > Ethereum will still be printing ETH in perpetuity; it only becomes deflationary whenever more is burned than printed. I underst…

> Staking that 1 ETH just got 10% more expensive because the opportunity cost of staking that ETH increased relative to spending it. Economically, this means that the system is going to drive out marginal stakers, by design.

I don't really get it. It's more expensive because you're making more money? Why wouldn't everyone just stake until they feel like spending? How does this drive out marginal stakers?

> But what I've been hearing from ETH holders forever

These are just people pumping their bags. No one actually knows how it's going down. Anyone who holds such alpha isn't posting it on Twitter.

Re: Ethereum Has Issues

#115

Post by thebean11 »

itsoktocry wrote: post #78
thebean11 wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think there's at least some value that can potentially be created. The fact that you can take out a loan or buy insurance and your counterparty is a smart contract is pretty interesting. It could seriously bring down insurance margins if you no longer have drones of people administering policies. Obviously remains to be seen how practical it is.

> It could seriously bring down insurance margins if you no longer have drones of people administering policies. Instead you might a bunch of people with zero actuarial experience gambling on policies. I agree, the concept is interesting, no regulation makes everything a crapshoot.

Maybe. Or you enable people who need these services but have no access currently to get them. Most likely both.

Re: Ethereum Has Issues

#116

Post by tick_tock_tick »

pshc wrote: post #87
pavel_lishin wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> once proof of stake finality arrives Which it hasn't, despite being six months away for years now. You cannot handwave away problems by promising you'll fix them with X in Y months, when you consistently fail to deliver X.

I keep seeing this "eternal six months away" FUD, but no one wants to admit the devs delivered on the Beacon Chain which has been running smoothly for 1.5 years, and the Merge testnets are working quite well. Bitcoin maximalists are out there all day grousing about made-up deadlines promised by strawmen and laundered through hearsay. It has nothing to do with reality.

Is Ethereum PoS yet? Simple Yes or No.

That's what people are complaining about they are years behind on what they promised.

Re: Ethereum Has Issues

#117

Post by WJW »

itsoktocry wrote: post #78
thebean11 wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think there's at least some value that can potentially be created. The fact that you can take out a loan or buy insurance and your counterparty is a smart contract is pretty interesting. It could seriously bring down insurance margins if you no longer have drones of people administering policies. Obviously remains to be seen how practical it is.

> It could seriously bring down insurance margins if you no longer have drones of people administering policies. Instead you might a bunch of people with zero actuarial experience gambling on policies. I agree, the concept is interesting, no regulation makes everything a crapshoot.

That seems like an insanely good opportunity for people with actual actuarial expertise to profit off any retail investors/gamblers in the market btw. That seems like a market that would professionalize extremely fast.

Re: Ethereum Has Issues

#118

Post by throwaway82652 »

thebean11 wrote: post #54
jmyeet wrote: post #51

So Crypto Andys like to hand-wave about the risk of a 51% attack but consider this: > This is in addition to the long-standing concentration of Ethereum mining power, with normally three and sometimes only two mining pools controlling over 50% of the mining power. There is further hand-waving about how Proof-of-Stake (over Proof-of-Waste) will magically fix these problems. But it's actually this PoW computing power t…

I think there's at least some value that can potentially be created. The fact that you can take out a loan or buy insurance and your counterparty is a smart contract is pretty interesting. It could seriously bring down insurance margins if you no longer have drones of people administering policies. Obviously remains to be seen how practical it is.

>The fact that you can take out a loan or buy insurance and your counterparty is a smart contract is pretty interesting.

No it isn't. I've been hearing this for years and I still haven't seen any reason anyone would actually want this, beyond the novelty factor. It's strictly worse than any other equivalent insurance or loan for a number of reasons, the worst one being that there's no human you can talk to when something goes wrong. If you think it's bad enough now when your bank has terrible customer service or your insurance company is fighting your claims, blockchains are like taking that a step further by making it technically impossible to provide any kind of customer service.

>It could seriously bring down insurance margins if you no longer have drones of people administering policies.

This sentence also makes zero sense. You don't need blockchains to replace insurance actuaries with an algorithm, insurance companies could already do that. Over the long-term they can't rely on this because the whole point of insurance is you constantly readjust your models based on risk which cannot be predicted. Once again I'm reading a cryptocurrency thread where everything is wrong and nothing makes any sense.

Re: Ethereum Has Issues

#119

Post by tick_tock_tick »

delaaxe wrote: post #77
bulbosaur123 wrote: post #28

What useful has Ethereum created apart from providing an ever-bloating platform for generation of infinite digital-only tokens? As of 2022 the oracle problem still hasn't been solved, so actual decentralized, objective real life object-to-blockchain interaction is impossible. Monero added fully anonymous crypto that is used by most of the dark web. USDT, USDC provided stablecoins that can circumvent what fiat can't.…

> As of 2022 the oracle problem still hasn't been solved What do you mean by that? I thought ChainLink solved that pretty well

ChainLink just distributes the trust around making it harder too corrupt but in no way solves the issue.

Re: Ethereum Has Issues

#120

Post by lukeramsden »

toolz wrote: post #106
px43 wrote: post #70

Ha, Flash Boys 2.0 was from 2019. This blog post is literally "I read a thing from three years ago and have lost faith in something that I never believed in in the first place". As someone who knows and has worked with all the people involved with the write-ups referenced in this blog post, I can pretty confidently say that the author is way way behind here. There have been some insane advancements in recent years th…

Do we have to accept that MEV is a problem? Just because it's been a tactic used in the shadows with traditional finance doesn't mean it's a problem in an open ecosystem where anyone willing to pay can play. There isn't some shadow elite funding a central government here lobbying for restrictive legislation to keep competition at arms length. In my opinion the crypto ecosystem in general is much more understanding an…

> Do we have to accept that MEV is a problem?

Yes and no. On the one hand, one does have to accept that "MEV" in the "_Maximum_ extractable value" is always going to be potentially present on a public blockchain - but often times, this is a good thing. Liquidity pool arbitrage is also "MEV", but is MEV that is absolutely vital to efficient markets, and the more advanced the players in that game get, the more everybody gets to enjoy liquid and efficient markets. On the other hand, more and more DeFi projects take in to consideration possible MEV extraction vectors when designing applications, and some even use "MEV protection" as a USP (such as CoWswap)

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