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Vitalik escalates ETH 2.0 merge as miners plan a 51% attack

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Re: Vitalik escalates ETH 2.0 merge as miners plan a 51% attack

#151
post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In Bitcoin decisions are made on the principle of one CPU, one vote. Rules only change with overwhelming hash power. Developers take a back seat. In Ethereum, developers run the show. They decide what gets pushed to miners via the All Core Devs call.

> In Bitcoin decisions are made on the principle of one CPU, one vote This is how it works in Ethereum as well > They decide what gets pushed to miners via the All Core Devs call. Blockstream does the same, it's literally no different.

> This is how it works in Ethereum as well

So is Ethereum not going to PoS if miners say no?

> Blockstream does the same, it's literally no different.

Every soft fork was voted on by miners. Developers provide the code, but it only activates with miner consent.

Re: Vitalik escalates ETH 2.0 merge as miners plan a 51% attack

#152

Regardless of the current issues with the updates, gas prices, different opinions on the community, devs vs miners vs users... Am I the only one who thinks people underestimate Ethereum and its EVM invention? In 2013 this guy (who I think is a visionary) wrote a document with a proposal that led to the creation of a world-wide turing-complete distributed computer. And still, people are just starting to realize its po…

There are many people who understand Ethereum and the larger blockchain / cryptocurrency ecosystem. I have made my career and wealth in this space. What you won’t find are tons of people like me on Hacker News. This website has a toxic reputation in the crypto world given its intensely negative attitude towards this industry. I love HN. Probably the website I check most. But I have tried so hard to understand why the…

I hope to understand the ecosystem better ... and imagine that at some point the greener operation and greater utility of Ethereum ETH 2.0 will beat out Bitcoin.

Will this lead to better returns for Ethereum over Bitcoin medium- or long-term, eventually? When will that switchover happen (if not already)?

Re: Vitalik escalates ETH 2.0 merge as miners plan a 51% attack

#153
post #107
post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Vitalik going from POW to POS is nonsense Being able to change for the better is not nonsense, it's vital to the survival and stability of a coin. The #1 complaint about Bitcoin (especially on HN) is its excessive use of power. Moving to POS solves this problem. Moving to POS allows ETH to scale transaction processing where BTC cannot. Miners are obviously angry because they spent millions (probably billions) on GP…

>Moving to POS allows ETH to scale transaction processing where BTC cannot. proof of stake vs proof of work is totally orthogonal to transaction processing volume.

Not entirely true. PoW's centralisation risk increases as bigger blocks mean longer network propagation and hence higher orphan rates.

PoS determine the list of proposers in advance, meaning no orphan risks.

Re: Vitalik escalates ETH 2.0 merge as miners plan a 51% attack

#154
post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A high price of ETH as an asset creates a higher security level for Ethereum the blockchain. The ecosystem of projects, apps, protocols, organizations, etc on Ethereum is healthier when the blockchain is guaranteed secure and stable for everyone to use. It's a benefit to everyone.

That has been repeated many times but is not true, the price of an arbitrary unit of currency or crypto has no relationship to its security. That price going up or down has no relationship on the "security level" of the blockchain.

I’m not so sure. Currently each validator has about 60k usd (32 eth) staked. They are disincentivized from misbehaving / attacking the network by the threat of their eth being slashed (and there are clear rules about how this happens).

To me, it seems that as the value of that ether increases, they have more incentive to behave, rather than risk the loss of their investment + large capital gain.

Re: Vitalik escalates ETH 2.0 merge as miners plan a 51% attack

#155
post #12

I'm not an expert, but if 51% of the existing hashpower doesn't want a change, it sounds less a 51% attack and more like miners voting against something that isn't in their interest. The whole point of blockchains is that the incentives are supposed to be aligned between miners and users. If that isn't the case here, it sounds like a problem.

You should think of miners as bodyguards. They aren't intended to be active participants on the network, they are intended to provide the service of securing the network and serving the interests of the users of the network.

If a group of bodyguards at a concert vote democratically and 51% of them decide the singer shouldn't be allowed to go on stage and sing (because of a grudge or whatever), is that a problem? Yes absolutely that's a problem, and probably all of them are going to get fired.

Same sort of idea here. If the miners aren't serving the best interests of the network, the network has no obligation to continue paying the miners tens of millions of dollars per day (no joke, that's how much miners on Ethereum make in revenue right now) to continue sticking around.

Re: Vitalik escalates ETH 2.0 merge as miners plan a 51% attack

#156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One of the biggest mistakes of cryptocurrency was calling it cryptocurrency. Distributed Ledgers have multitudes of use cases. One of them is as a currency, but you don't need the base layer to be a currency. ETH doesn't need to be spent as much as its needed to act as a quantitative measure of ownership and buy in. You can build a currency on the second layer, which has been done.

Can you elaborate on this a bit more? Doesn’t ETH on some level have to change hands for work to get done?

[deleted]

Re: Vitalik escalates ETH 2.0 merge as miners plan a 51% attack

#157
post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That has been repeated many times but is not true, the price of an arbitrary unit of currency or crypto has no relationship to its security. That price going up or down has no relationship on the "security level" of the blockchain.

Look up Proof of Stake which is what Ethereum is moving to later this year. In Proof of Stake validators put up an ETH bond in order to randomly get picked to help create blocks in the network. The higher the price of ETH the more expensive it becomes to attack the network.

But isn’t that “the higher the market cap of ETH, the harder it is to attack”? Does the price of a single unit actually matter here, market cap being held equal?

Re: Vitalik escalates ETH 2.0 merge as miners plan a 51% attack

#158
post #118

Bitcoin, Ethereum, and cryptocurrency spawn a generation of people who worship Austrian economics. This ETH upgrade is making ETH even more deflationary. People are obsessed with price and want to pump the numbers. These wars are not doing anything to advance adoption and bring freedom to people. Crypto builders are pumping the coins under the banners of freedom and decentralization. The problem with crypto is volati…

What does “worship” mean? I am a believer of the Austrian theory of economics. Are Keynesian / Monetarists also “worshippers” of a theory? Modern economics is not that old. I fundamentally believe printing as much money as we are across the rich world is going to lead to disaster, just as it has time and again in the developing world (see Venezuela, Zimbabwe, Argentina, Brazil, etc.). If anything, Austrian economics…

>I fundamentally believe printing as much money as we are across the rich world is going to lead to disaster

You are fundamentally wrong. Austrian has worshippers because it's a cult. It has no basis in reality.

Re: Vitalik escalates ETH 2.0 merge as miners plan a 51% attack

#160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One limitation of Bitcoin script is that it's not turing complete. But there are sidechains like rsk with defi apps like sovryn that bring smart contracts and defi to BTC.

I'm not an expert in Computer Theory but other people proved Bitcoin and Bitcoin Script are Turing Complete: [1] https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3160279 [2] https://coingeek.com/bitcoin-script-is-turing-complete-scryp... [3] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M6j-11H2O7c

Craig Wright is a moron and a fraud.
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