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The Problem with Ethereum

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Re: The Problem with Ethereum

#191

Post by casi18 »

animex wrote: post #88

I think if anything the crypto-experiment has revealed is that an uncaring, cold machine doesn't meet the needs of the human condition. A person fat-fingers his life savings to null, a thief socially engineers someone's money, a bug causes assets to be trapped, etc. It's clear we need a better system that can service our imperfections.

and things like social wallets and trust networks as a response to those issues are emerging as the best way forward, less seed phrases and hardware wallets with tiny buttons. connecting with friends is the best security. turns out ethereum is a social network with a very fast uptake worldwide.

it shows us that community and support for one another is the Layer 0 that these things are built on top of. code isnt law, people come first. if we stick with that it could work pretty well.

Re: The Problem with Ethereum

#192

Post by nearbuy »

Taek wrote: post #187
nearbuy wrote: post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 determi…

Ah, I should have known better. I was misinterpreting from the article linked in the article where it says (about a fork), "Miners, exchanges, and node operators also had to agree to update their software."

Re: The Problem with Ethereum

#193

Post by csomar »

nootropicat wrote: post #145
csomar wrote: post #123

> Excuses are made and explanations are given as to why in this particular case an exception needs to be made to the “Code is Law” promise I really wonder what Ethereum investors think of this. A "precedent" was made. Crypto has yet to come to the real test with governments, courts and the physical laws of humans. With Bitcoin, it can be stipulated that changing the network is impossible or unheard of; but that's not…

>This is not the case of Bitcoin where the introduction of KYC for mining will require a hard-fork. That's not true, introducing full kyc for transactions only requires 51% of hashrate. >It doesn't help, also, that the network is being "processed" by a few elites (or pools of wealth) that could be, potentially, identified and made to obey the "government/s". A direct opposite is true. PoW is extremely vulnerable to a…

Forcing a KYC on miners will trigger a hard-fork on the Bitcoin chain. It doesn't matter where miners keep mining, the end users are going to determine the strongest chain (via price) and thus the KYC miners will either shutdown operations or move to a KYC-free environment.

Re: The Problem with Ethereum

#194

Post by TomSwirly »

bluebit wrote: post #97
kristofferR wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

True, Taproot is looking promising. Yet, it's the only major change since 2017, I don't think they're moving fast enough. And what's the next major improvement on the cards for Bitcoin after Taproot? I haven't heard much, and that is worrying in and of itself IMO.

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.

> the base money of the internet

You can't. Be serious.

What percentage of internet transactions are performed in Bitcoin? 1%? 0.1%?

Re: The Problem with Ethereum

#195

Post by gorgoiler »

casi18 wrote: post #185
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 sugg…

The government is the people. If cryptocurrency is an end-run around the collapse-of or lack-of democracy then I get it, but we deserve better in the West.

Re: The Problem with Ethereum

#196

Post by yunohn »

woile wrote: post #174
yunohn wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Fair enough, I agree there is somewhat of a difference.

Re: The Problem with Ethereum

#197

Post by vvillena »

h0l0cube wrote: post #31
DenseComet wrote: post #6

Seems like one of the core arguments of this is that the the core devs have pushed the difficulty bomb multiple times because they've missed their original timelines for switching to PoS without any repercussions. It seems to me that this is actually the correct thing to do. I'd rather the core devs take their time and iron out the issues instead of being incentivized to play fast and loose with a system that manages…

There's a little more to the argument: > This time the working class has their pay reduced from 4 Eth to 3 Eth per block, a 25% pay cut. Miners now earn 40% less per block than at the time of the community’s constitution, which promised that code was law, and which the ruling class later said they would break only once, for what was an especially good reason. But the code is law promise has now been broken so many ti…

This argument is so old that it's almost endearing to see people arguing about it time and time again. Code isn't law, and it never was. Consensus is. This is true for all blockchain-based cryptos.

Miners are free not to upgrade every time a new protocol version is proposed. Why do they upgrade then? If consensus was established around the older set of rules, that would be it. But instead there's consensus around the newer rules. And that's simply because miners individually decide that the newer rules are better, for whatever reason.

Re: The Problem with Ethereum

#198

Post by mandmandam »

elevenoh wrote: post #188
mandmandam wrote: post #178

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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

Yes there is.

Every chess move has advantages and disadvantages, yes. But some are objectively better.

Every algorithm has advantages and disadvantages. But some are objectively better.

Believing that nothing can be objectively better than Bitcoin, and calling people who disagree delusional, is less than useful.

Re: The Problem with Ethereum

#199

Post by silasdavis »

Taek wrote: post #187
nearbuy wrote: post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 determi…

The miners do have the power to hard fork - they can choose to run a node that implements the fork

> A hard fork is determined by the users, who have to upgrade their software.

Who are 'the users' here? Light clients? Users of wallets? None of these have the power to adopt a fork, soft or hard. The collective action of the miners (or validators) defines which chains still retain liveness. For example in the hard fork between Ethereum Classic (ETC) and Ethereum (ETH) ETC was able to exist only because miners chose to to mine it. This in turn did give non-mining users the choice of how to distribute their demand and create extrinsic value for the ETC token. I wouldn't say this gives non-mining users any control over a hard fork since it happens after-the-fact.

> If the software updates automatically, then the power of hard forking lies with the developers

I don't know of a node distribution for Ethereum that works this way.

The core developers have power as in knowledge and power as in authority, the later being the traditional form of political power.

Re: The Problem with Ethereum

#200

Post by noxer »

Taek wrote: post #187
nearbuy wrote: post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 determi…

Not correct. The software update that goes to the uses but if miners dont mine for the hard fork, then the user cant use it. Its a technical reality that they could update anyway and at least some miners would mine for them but that would just be causing a chain fork and 2 different chains. The miners have the power to decide where they mine. And user have the power to decide on which chain they operate on. They both have power with their choice. But the choice for user is limited to chains that actually exist. For for now only ETH and ETC exists but if there is demand for more chains because a significant portion of people disagree with the progress then more chains can fork off. This however requires miners who are willing to mine on a forked chain.

The power is split but the constant "fights" between the different parties (miners/users) is the reasons these fist-gen (PoW/PoS) blockchains can not be efficient. There is and forever will be a misaligned interest between the two parties which drives up prices and slows down progress.

Software's auto-update feature is completely irrelevant to consensus. It obviously does not define who has the power at all. To update is always voluntary. Software devs dont technically have any power they have influence.

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