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The Problem with Ethereum

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Re: The Problem with Ethereum

#171

Post by chx »

dcow wrote: post #19

I lost interest in Eth when the “code is law” law was broken. I’m glad I did. I don’t believe proof of steak is the correct solution to the energy required for proof of work. To be clear, a lot of good insight has come from Eth, but I’m not ideologically bought in anymore. Recently I have been exploring Chia as a farmer. Rather than the ruling class being a group devs and random early miners, the ruling class is a (s…

> I don’t believe proof of steak is the correct solution

Please don't, it's bad enough for GPUs don't take my dinner too.

Re: The Problem with Ethereum

#172

Post by nootropicat »

Tepix wrote: post #147
nootropicat wrote: post #131

Miners are most definitely not the working class and they're not doing any useful work. This sounds harsh because most individual miners aren't hostile in any way - but if miners were a one entity, there would be no exaggeration at all. Collectively, paying miners is like paying the mob to not destroy the system, as they are only group with the power to do so. Without miners at all attacks would be impossible. 51% at…

Miners are not doing any useful work is incorrect, they are securing the system.

Then Viking raiders were "securing England" and getting Danegeld in return for their useful, hard work of _not_ raiding and pillaging.

Re: The Problem with Ethereum

#173

Post by dalbasal »

pattusk wrote: post #167
dalbasal wrote: post #156

The social class metaphor is stretched pretty thin, but it can be interested to follow such threads and see where they lead. I suppose it's endlessly interpretable, but here's my take on bringing it down to earth. - Different "classes" have different interests. (1)Miners. (2) Big, rich coin owners. (3) Rule makers and influencers. Group 2 & 3 overlap and might collaborate to screw miners. - The author is thinks funda…

> "The hope a lot of people had/have for crypto is that it replaces people, instititions and rules with explicit code" My experience in crypto over the past two years has been exactly the opposite. The main issues facing the space today all have to do with governance: how do you get holders of gov tokens to vote rather than hold? how do you involve them in the evolution of your protocol? There are entire protocols be…

I don't think we disagree.

That's why I wrote had/have. Highly idealistic ideas for crypto have been a huge part of this whole thing. Predictably though, reality is bringing the ideas down to earth... and what you describe is what that means.

"Code is a tool to make sure laws are enforced", is far less idealistic than "code is law." More corruptible. More practicable. These can all be true at one.

I agree that its fascinating.

Re: The Problem with Ethereum

#174

Post by woile »

yunohn wrote: post #79
woile wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well you have uniswap's vote on the educational fund. Which IIRC was about allocating money to lobby for crypto. https://app.uniswap.org/#/vote/1/1

Yes, so you’re proving my point? Sure, it’s about lobbying, but in defense of crypto (Previously known as: DeFi Political Defense Fund), to keep their crypto ball rolling.

yes, indeed. I just thought this case is slightly different, they chose to go out and do politics (true, over crypto nonetheless). But I feel that normally, all the proposals are about the protocol itself, changes rates, etc and this case it's about interacting with other humans.

Re: The Problem with Ethereum

#175

Post by kevingadd »

jaked89 wrote: post #168

Early crypto adopters are freedom minded people. I have no problem with a new economic system where the wealthiest are the most freedom-oriented. If crypto ever replaces the current monetary system, late adopters will have to fight for crumbles. And that's OK; you support deception & violence, so you stay poor. That's cosmic justice.

So if I'm understanding you correctly, "late adopters" including people who don't have money for mining hardware/coins or don't even own a computer, just a phone - deserve to be poor because not buying in to crypto is supporting "deception and violence"? What's the logic here?

Re: The Problem with Ethereum

#177

Post by gorgoiler »

Cryptocurrency is so unfair. Who do these people think they are, trying to push upon us a new gold?

If a new value exchange mechanism is to be invented, it really ought to be one that doesn’t slyly concentrate billions of wealth into the hands of a few. There’s plenty ways of doing that already thank you very much.

Re: The Problem with Ethereum

#178

Post by mandmandam »

elevenoh wrote: post #164
Tepix wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Miners are not doing any useful work is incorrect, they are securing the system.

Yeah folks don't seem to realize every monetary system requires 'sacrifice' for its security (whether this is lock-up of capital, work etc.) The market most efficiently determines whether [& which] to sacrifice (e.g. computation or capital lock-up) is worthwhile.

The market has not efficiently determined that though.

_Objectively_ better alternatives to Bitcoin are around for at least the last five years.

No one can realistically argue that it's better to have a system use 6 million times more energy, cost infinitely more, and require waiting 16 minutes for a confirmation compared to less than a second.

"The market" is chock-full of inertia, vested interests, propaganda, sunk costs, and technical ignorance. There are literally thousands of cryptocurrencies - and the majority are scams. What has "the market" done to protect people?

I say all this to do my part to improve "the market", but my estimation of the market's ability to efficiently determine its arse from a hole in the ground is low.

Other examples of "the market's efficiency" include tobacco companies responsible for killing millions making bank for decades by fudding science, energy companies fudding data for decades to burn the planet while making billions, monopolies, duopolies, externalised costs, racketeering, collusion, collateral damage, etc etc etc.

Re: The Problem with Ethereum

#179

Post by jstx1 »

Tepix wrote: post #152
tofukid wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

https://github.com/bitcoin/bitcoin/commits/master I wouldn’t consider that stagnate.

How many hardforks has the core bitcoin project seen in the last five years? Bitcoin has been incapable of doing a hardfork for whatever reason for a while. That's why it will disappear sooner or later. If you don't evolve, you die.

> How many hardforks has the core bitcoin project seen in the last five years?

Can you elaborate on this - why would the core project care how many times it's forked? The forks shouldn't affect the core project at all, that's the whole point of having a fork in the first place. Or alternatively, if you like and use the fork, then you aren't on the core bitcoin chain anymore. Either way the main BTC chain doesn't care.

Re: The Problem with Ethereum

#180

Post by pshc »

jstx1 wrote: post #114
miguelmota wrote: post #74

If something is hard in theory, it's 10x harder in implementation. Complex systems have a lot of 'unknown unknowns' that can't be forecasted. Ethereum is $300B+ live network so every small change takes time to research, test, and implement. Migrating from PoW to PoS is like swapping out the engine of an airplane in mid-air.

If you ask the cryptocurrency subreddit, the best thing to do with any money you have[1] is to buy ETH at any price and stake it (i.e. lock it in and receive interest until ETH 2.0 is released). I find that absolutely mindblowing given all the complexity you're pointing out + the fact that there is no date and no clear explanation of what happens to the funds in the event of failure. And on top of this the fact that…

ETH2 is going to happen sooner or later… The beacon chain already works in production so it seems inevitable the devs will merge mainnet onto it. Not completely convinced about their 2021/2022 timeframe.

All the validator deposits are public data; how would they be destroyed? The funds will have to be unlocked at some point, people will demand it.

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