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The Problem with Ethereum

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Re: The Problem with Ethereum

#181

Post by nearbuy »

silasdavis wrote: post #92

There's plenty wrong with Ethereum, but casting miners as 'the working class' is a flawed analogy. The mercantile class would be closer to the mark. Notably, their hashing power is based in real world economic power and they extract an annuity from capital expenditure on mining operations and hardware. I also question whether miners are really providing the labour power, as you might expect the working class to do. T…

The miners, collectively, is also the group with the power to hard fork or not. So in some sense, they're the ruling class and the core developers are just proposing the changes to them.

Re: The Problem with Ethereum

#182

Post by jstx1 »

pshc wrote: post #180
jstx1 wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> The funds will have to be unlocked at some point, people will demand it.

This seems contrary to everything crypto claims to be about. "Just trust them, surely you'll get the money back"

Re: The Problem with Ethereum

#183

Post by pshc »

jstx1 wrote: post #182
pshc wrote: post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> The funds will have to be unlocked at some point, people will demand it. This seems contrary to everything crypto claims to be about. "Just trust them, surely you'll get the money back"

I believe in them to deliver eventually. Would you be interested to place a long bet?

Re: The Problem with Ethereum

#184

Post by automatic6131 »

Sevii wrote: post #12

I emphasize with the arguments here but I differ in my conclusion for two reasons. 1. I don't own just Ethereum, its not a boat that I'm riding in, its one of many gambles I'm making. 2. The Ethereum network has generated a ton of really good stuff (Smart Contracts, DEFI, NFTS, IPFS, ENS, etc) despite whatever governance problems it has. Cryptocurrencies are far from mature. There is no guarantee eth and btc will sti…

> The Ethereum network has generated a ton of really good stuff (Smart Contracts, DEFI, NFTS, IPFS, ENS, etc) Did you miss out the word "exluding" at the beginning of that list?

Re: The Problem with Ethereum

#185

Post by casi18 »

gorgoiler wrote: post #177

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.

> Who do these people think they are, trying to push upon us a new gold?

it is completely opt in, you don't have to participate.

which seems better than the money governments say we have to use (because they are in control of it and can use that power to maintain control of people).

> one that doesn’t slyly concentrate billions of wealth into the hands of a few.

lots of people in crypto very open to any ideas or suggestions you have to solving the matthew effect, non-coercive tax systems, and public goods funding. genuinely, any community currency design or trust system or consensus mechanism you can come up with people will be excited to try out. its a massive open design space right now and people want new ideas. lots of interesting discussions happening via orgs like https://www.radicalxchange.org/

Re: The Problem with Ethereum

#186

Post by paulgb »

TimJRobinson wrote: post #108
bluebit wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure we should treat the base money of the internet the same way we do tech startups - to "move fast and break things". I would like to know that my BTC is stored in a network backed by code that is secure with slow and steady progress.

I agree. Bitcoin is a better store of value, Ethereum is a better tech stack for innovation. They serve different purposes and so should have different development schedules and risk aversion.

At its core, a store of value is just something that other people will desire as much now as they do at some later point in time. In that sense, Bitcoin runs the risk of being left behind if PoW at 7tx/sec becomes seen as the dial-up modem of crypto.

Re: The Problem with Ethereum

#187

Post by Taek »

nearbuy wrote: post #181
silasdavis wrote: post #92

There's plenty wrong with Ethereum, but casting miners as 'the working class' is a flawed analogy. The mercantile class would be closer to the mark. Notably, their hashing power is based in real world economic power and they extract an annuity from capital expenditure on mining operations and hardware. I also question whether miners are really providing the labour power, as you might expect the working class to do. T…

The miners, collectively, is also the group with the power to hard fork or not. So in some sense, they're the ruling class and the core developers are just proposing the changes to them.

This is a general misconception about how consensus works in blockchains. Miners can choose whether or not to adopt a "soft fork". A soft fork can't violate any existing rules, it can just introduce new rules.

A hard fork is allowed to violate existing rules, and gives you more flexibility in what can be changed. And miners do not have the power to decide whether or not a hard fork will happen. A hard fork is determined by the users, who have to upgrade their software.

If the software updates automatically, then the power of hard forking lies with the developers, who could just push the new code out via an automatic update.

Re: The Problem with Ethereum

#188

Post by elevenoh »

mandmandam wrote: post #178
elevenoh wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

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

If you truly think this way, you're deluding yourself & this is where I stop reading.

Everything has tradeoffs. There's no 'objective' better.

Re: The Problem with Ethereum

#189

Post by yawaworht1978 »

None of the Cryptocurrencies are truly decentralized, at best, they are distributed. They all have devs with access to the repos and devs who can deploy changes. Especially Ethereum is firmly in the hands of Buterin and company.

Both depend on each other. Without miners, no currency, without code no mining, without very high algo difficulty, no safety.

Re: The Problem with Ethereum

#190

Post by elevenoh »

birdyrooster wrote: post #166
elevenoh wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Everything wrong with crypto is the notion you can make a global reserve currency impervious to special interests This ain't binary. Ain't yes or no. Also.. why do you assume crypto is gunning for 'global reserve currency'? Crypto enables all types of experiments toward reducing the insider-asymmetry nature of central control control (e.g. political whim money printing, political whim monetary policy) >Fiat will alw…

The only reason Michael Saylor is telling people to mortgage their house and sell their stonks to buy BTC is because he and a bunch of other whales are gunning to make BTC the world reserve currency. You see this mentality everywhere and it is the only way these coins are going to go to the moon. Not to mention a lot of these people are libertarians who see this as their way to “fix” the problems of central banks. Ce…

>but crypto is subject to the same politics only with a much smaller pool of voters

Anyone can change the crypto you use if you don't like the mechanisms or decisions.

Most can't change their choice of government/monetary policy.

Market selection pressure works very well historically. We don't have this without crypto.

>The mechanisms of distributing crypto clients will betray the interests of the common citizen. There is no leverage for commoners, only special interests.

I'm not sure what you're getting at here. Unclear.

>Inflation could be used to redistribute wealth for greater equity and the worlds wealthiest see this threat which I think is the only reason crypto has their attention.

Are you aware of the nature of inflation? Of where new money supply 1st hits? of the set of special interests aware of & open-market-front-running impending inflation before it's unanimously decided on? Doesn't seem like it.

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