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The Ethereum merge is done

coindesk.com

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Re: The Ethereum merge is done

#191

Post by colinsane »

SilverBirch wrote: post #115

There are two interesting things I want to watch from this. The first is I'm interested to see what kind of bull run ETH goes on. The merge has been incredibly long coming, it has huge risks and I think that puts downward pressure on price, you really don't want to be doing stuff in ETH at the moment because there's a fairly good chance something goes wrong, someone stealds $XBn and runs off and the Ethereum guys go…

regarding price, one can argue it both ways. at the point of the merge, most assets on ethereum are risky: if you were a uniswap LP and the two assets you were pooling chose different forks as their “official” one (most meaningful for off-chain collateralized assets like USDC), you can bet arbitrageurs would have left you holding the worthless asset on both chains. accordingly, Eth became the “safest” asset during the fork, since both forks will recognize it. that would create buy pressure leasing up to the fork, which goes away after the fork.

but there’s a million arguments on both sides of that picture. i think the strongest argument for price direction is that PoS miners are less likely to sell their Eth immediately after mining it than PoW miners because the latter purchased mining equipment with USD and want to repay that, whereas the former are invested in Ethereum itself instead of their mining equipment. also it sounds like block rewards are decreased with PoS, so the currency itself is deflationary now (?)

Re: The Ethereum merge is done

#192

Post by Hendrikto »

bsaul wrote: post #170
0xfoobar wrote: post #68

For those interested in understanding the tech rather than the typical bashing things as beneath them, I wrote up a detailed technical explainer of how Ethereum PoS works: https://0xfoobar.substack.com/p/ethereum-proof-of-stake

I find the complexity of that algorithm both impressive ( since they seem to have made it work), but also quite worrying. I'm really not sure how such a beast can't be filled with bugs, not in the implementation but rather in the protocol. I know a lot of very smart people are working on this, but i'd rather have something conceptually simpler to work as the base layer for a whole new economy.

Making PoS scale to hundreds of thousands of nodes with commodity hardware is not simple though. Few projects managed so far, and Ethereum wasn‘t designed for it from the outset, so it‘s even more difficult.

Re: The Ethereum merge is done

#193

Post by silisili »

swalsh wrote: post #174
silisili wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm in the same boat. However, I'm holding strong in being ignorant, as I believe crypto is a fad with no inherent value. I'm an avid reader and learner, but only if the topic is interesting or makes sense. Cryptocoins meet neither of those criteria -to me-. That can be difficult if you read tech news like us, but it will give me a small twinge of joy if I live longer than crypto. Guess we'll see.

I think there are a few common misconceptions that make people not understand the real value crypto is bringing to the table. Many in tech look at crypto, and blockchain specifically as if it is another technicalogical capability they can integrate into their enterprise architecture. From that perspective blockchain in general doesn't really make sense. As cool as the composability of tokens and smart contracts are,…

Thanks for the well thought out response.

Perhaps my biggest issue then is I'm not all in on the purely digital world that you describe and admit doesn't really exist, yet. That is to say, my plumber doesn't care about any of this and just wants cash. In the future, that can and probably will change, of course.

But today, in our current world, very few industries and virtually no blue collar industries accept such currency.

So then the question becomes, what is the value of . Some will talk about energy, or efficiency. Some will talk about scarcity. Some will talk tech merits. But nobody to date has been able to convince me that it has any real value. There are no armies or economies validating it.

I think in simple terms, perhaps I'm a luddite. If someone, say completely disconnected from modern conveniences, were selling an item, I could perhaps trade physical goods for it. Or perhaps shiny metals, and explain why they're valuable(assuming they didn't know). Or explain dollars, and the guarantee behind them. How would you sell them on cryptocoins having value? The tech doesn't matter a ton here to a person, so onto the value. Why are bitcoins worth more than say, beanie babies of yore? Both seem to be run purely on speculation, at this point.

Said another way, if someone gives me 10k in cash, I have faith it will still be worth 10k in a year(ignoring our awful inflation). If someone gave me 10k in bitcoins, I have zero faith it would be worth anything tomorrow.

Re: The Ethereum merge is done

#194

Post by toastal »

atomlib wrote: post #91
0xfoobar wrote: post #68

For those interested in understanding the tech rather than the typical bashing things as beneath them, I wrote up a detailed technical explainer of how Ethereum PoS works: https://0xfoobar.substack.com/p/ethereum-proof-of-stake

What's Substack? Is that new Medium?

It'll be okay like Medium used to be until it isn't and the funders turn it into Medium while seeking that return on investment. You're still better off owning your own blog in the long run.

Re: The Ethereum merge is done

#197

Post by CMCDragonkai »

swalsh wrote: post #174
silisili wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm in the same boat. However, I'm holding strong in being ignorant, as I believe crypto is a fad with no inherent value. I'm an avid reader and learner, but only if the topic is interesting or makes sense. Cryptocoins meet neither of those criteria -to me-. That can be difficult if you read tech news like us, but it will give me a small twinge of joy if I live longer than crypto. Guess we'll see.

I think there are a few common misconceptions that make people not understand the real value crypto is bringing to the table. Many in tech look at crypto, and blockchain specifically as if it is another technicalogical capability they can integrate into their enterprise architecture. From that perspective blockchain in general doesn't really make sense. As cool as the composability of tokens and smart contracts are,…

Nice comment. That's basically the same conclusion I came to as well. Crypto's real impact is political-economical. The tech doesn't matter too much. The whole point is that users get to own a portion of the systems they interact with.

Re: The Ethereum merge is done

#198

Post by Vespasian »

bsaul wrote: post #170
0xfoobar wrote: post #68

For those interested in understanding the tech rather than the typical bashing things as beneath them, I wrote up a detailed technical explainer of how Ethereum PoS works: https://0xfoobar.substack.com/p/ethereum-proof-of-stake

I find the complexity of that algorithm both impressive ( since they seem to have made it work), but also quite worrying. I'm really not sure how such a beast can't be filled with bugs, not in the implementation but rather in the protocol. I know a lot of very smart people are working on this, but i'd rather have something conceptually simpler to work as the base layer for a whole new economy.

Cryptocurrencies impose some complex constraints on themselves that require complex solutions.

Conceptually banks and exchanges solved the consensus problem decades ago and they did it with a highly secured simple database and lots of crosschecks.

But if you trust nobody (except some developers somehwere) then things get tricky

Re: The Ethereum merge is done

#199

Post by friendzis »

leroman wrote: post #111

Great! Unlike BTC the miners can sell their gear so they are not down on their investment.. I imagine BTC miners putting up a good fight if this was on the table and they stand to lose all their asics

One, they are going to sasturate the market which will drive the prices down significantly. They cannot not saturate the market, because GPUs age due to new developments by manufacturers. This already makes the prospect of recouping initial investments rahter dim.

Consider that non-miner market has a huge distain for miners and are willing to pay premium on new cards just to stick to the miners. I don't think resale value is going to be spectacular.

Re: The Ethereum merge is done

#200

Post by salmonlogs »

once_inc wrote: post #172
yieldcrv wrote: post #158

Congratulations miners, validators, and hosted validator services! Big win for sustainability and industry!

A recent study by an American governmental organisation (I don't remember which) recently showed that Bitcoin can be used to reduce methane emissions. This in turn would make Bitcoin mining and Proof-of-work net carbon negative (significantly so if my memory of the graph accompanying the news isn't letting me down). edit: also, this is a new frontier that combines the best of both worlds for energy suppliers, bitcoin…

Let's be clear: Bitcoin is NOT reducing methane emissions or carbon emissions. Crypto mining cannot reduce anything. This is just a straw man.

The study you reference discussed burning waste methane to turn into electricity, rather than gas flaring.

That electricity could be used for anything. Water desalination, stored for grid balancing, powering agricultural needs or offsetting the electrical needs of the gas facilities.

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