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Vitalik: Ethereum Merge Just Finalized

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Re: Vitalik: Ethereum Merge Just Finalized

#21

Post by mratsim »

bsaul wrote: post #13
amanzi wrote: post #7

My only crypto-mining success is that I mined an ether back in the day when it was worth $10. I have it stashed away for a rainy day, but I have no idea if it's going to be worth anything in the future. Can anyone give a TLDR of what this merge means?

They changed the underlying algorithm for determining who to trust to validate transactions in the system. This new algorithm requires 1% of the computer power of the previous one, and supposedly work just as fine.

0.0089%: source https://ethereum.org/en/energy-consumption/ using Digiconomist figures.

22000x less energy consumed than Youtube or gold mining and 10000x less than Netflix.

Re: Vitalik: Ethereum Merge Just Finalized

#22

Post by mratsim »

ralusek wrote: post #18

Can someone explain why the move to PoS isn't going to reduce transaction time, increase network capacity, and reduce gas prices? Is this because of arbitrary parameters in place in order to keep that true? From a technical perspective, I don't know how a consensus mechanism moving from a system for which slowness/hardness is the mechanism...to instead moving to a system for which slowness need not even be a factor,…

The "only" thing that change was the consensus algorithm.

That's good software engineering practice when you have hundreds of billions at stake. Minimize the bug surface.

Furthermore there are other concerns, Ethereum prides itself in running on the most modest of hardware. Many stakers are staking on Raspberry Pi 4.

A blockchain with large transaction speed require very powerful machines. It becomes impossible to sync with less than 1Gbps of bandwidth and storage cost becomes prohibitive.

Doing so before implementing state expiry/rent to reflect the cost of storing data in a blockchain will reduce decentralization as hardware requirements require professionalization of node operators.

Furthermore there is the rollup-centric roadmap for future scalability: https://www.reddit.com/r/ethfinance/comments/r26hhv/rollupce...

Re: Vitalik: Ethereum Merge Just Finalized

#23

Post by mratsim »

can16358p wrote: post #14
xnorswap wrote: post #2

Twitter really needs to sort out what it means to be "verified", when you're presented with this: https://imgur.com/a/HjOF0gS It's so barely different to an actual twitter thread where the same person is saying all three parts.

Why would they? It would decrease engagement. A significant portion of Twitter is bots and fake profiles/scams and Twitter isn't best known for caring about users or being honest. More engagement (even if from fake profiles) = more ads to show = more money. This would decrease trust in the platform in the long run for sure but they probably think they're too big to fail without a good competition anyway.

> More engagement (even if from fake profiles) = more ads to show = more money.

I'm surprised bots actually load ads.

Re: Vitalik: Ethereum Merge Just Finalized

#24

Post by mratsim »

mccorrinall wrote: post #15
bsaul wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not a big fan of crypto, but at least the ethereum chain is building a very interesting stack of technologies (smart contract, token, etc). If any major crypto project has the chance of one day becoming useful at anything, my bet would be on this one.

Bitcoin has almost the same capabilities for smart contracts, except loops! Tokens can be implemented as well, see https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Colored_Coins I am with Hal Finney here: Any successful replacement of the Bitcoin block chain will forever undermine the credibility of any successor. How is an investor to know that it won't happen again? Rebooting now may benefit a few thousand early adopters. What happens w…

Why replace? It's not a winner-takes-all game.

Re: Vitalik: Ethereum Merge Just Finalized

#25

Post by landemva »

ralusek wrote: post #18

Can someone explain why the move to PoS isn't going to reduce transaction time, increase network capacity, and reduce gas prices? Is this because of arbitrary parameters in place in order to keep that true? From a technical perspective, I don't know how a consensus mechanism moving from a system for which slowness/hardness is the mechanism...to instead moving to a system for which slowness need not even be a factor,…

They could go faster, but then they would be like the centralized Solana chain which is controlled by VCs. High throughput is easier using a centralized data center.

Decentralization is good and is challenging to scale. I see eth making the right moves to keep the chain decentralized and accesible to those running nodes at home.

Re: Vitalik: Ethereum Merge Just Finalized

#26

Post by can16358p »

mratsim wrote: post #23
can16358p wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why would they? It would decrease engagement. A significant portion of Twitter is bots and fake profiles/scams and Twitter isn't best known for caring about users or being honest. More engagement (even if from fake profiles) = more ads to show = more money. This would decrease trust in the platform in the long run for sure but they probably think they're too big to fail without a good competition anyway.

> More engagement (even if from fake profiles) = more ads to show = more money. I'm surprised bots actually load ads.

Bots don't. People who get more engagement due to bots do.

Re: Vitalik: Ethereum Merge Just Finalized

#27

Post by em_te »

ralusek wrote: post #18

Can someone explain why the move to PoS isn't going to reduce transaction time, increase network capacity, and reduce gas prices? Is this because of arbitrary parameters in place in order to keep that true? From a technical perspective, I don't know how a consensus mechanism moving from a system for which slowness/hardness is the mechanism...to instead moving to a system for which slowness need not even be a factor,…

Transaction time was arbitrarily set to allow time for a majority of parties on the Internet to verify transactions. It is a trade off of speed versus security. It was picked as a common denominator so that people on the opposite side of the globe and on slightly slower connections can participate in the verification process. That's why changing to PoS doesn't affect it.

Network capacity isn't affected because the amount of data exchanged is the same.

Gas prices isn't affected because gas price is only correlated with the transactions per second (which isn't changed as transaction time isn't changed) and demand and supply for transactions. When lots of people need to make transactions, demand goes up and price goes up. Vice versa. This is the same with other chains too.

Some chains intentionally lower the transaction time to increase throughput to achieve a lower gas fee, but the disadvantage is that only fast peers can verify the transactions fast enough which leads to centralization.

Re: Vitalik: Ethereum Merge Just Finalized

#28

Post by clarkeni »

landemva wrote: post #25
ralusek wrote: post #18

Can someone explain why the move to PoS isn't going to reduce transaction time, increase network capacity, and reduce gas prices? Is this because of arbitrary parameters in place in order to keep that true? From a technical perspective, I don't know how a consensus mechanism moving from a system for which slowness/hardness is the mechanism...to instead moving to a system for which slowness need not even be a factor,…

They could go faster, but then they would be like the centralized Solana chain which is controlled by VCs. High throughput is easier using a centralized data center. Decentralization is good and is challenging to scale. I see eth making the right moves to keep the chain decentralized and accesible to those running nodes at home.

Solana has a higher nakamoto coefficient than ethereum. It’s faster due to higher base validator requirements and technical improvements (such as proof of history, etc). Which makes sense as it’s a newer chain.
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