Live data from Hacker News

The Problem with Ethereum

tomerstrolight.medium.com

201–210 of 321 posts

Re: The Problem with Ethereum

#201

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…

But then you don't have time bomb any more, is the point. And you don't have code is law any more. If you will hard fork every time it's convenient, you don't have anything stable. If they did it once, that would be one thing. But now it's happening semi regularly. Difficulty bomb is pretty much a marketing lie by now.

>If you will hard fork every time it's convenient

Creating a hard fork isnt easy as you make it out to be

Re: The Problem with Ethereum

#202
post #149
post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Hardware gets outdated quickly as mining difficulty rises, People can and still do mine Ethereum with the cards they did 5 years ago, and the difficulty is irrelevant to whether your hardware is outdated or not.

If you run your mining rig in the Ukraine with stolen electric power, yes you can do that.

According to the nicehash calculator (which is fairly accurate) even with the really expensive electricity (0.34euro/kwh) in Germany you'll net 1.31 euro a day with a 1080 (released May 2016).

https://www.nicehash.com/profitability-calculator/nvidia-gtx...

Re: The Problem with Ethereum

#203
post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> some cryptos like Tezos are governed quite decentralized in many ways. Whenever crypto enthusiasts tell me about DeFi governance, I get excited about the possibilities. Then, I actually take a look at some of the group decisions, and literally all of them are crypto/coin-related, and don’t deal with any /real/ or human problems…

I'd recommend looking at Project Catalyst out of the Cardano ecosystem. Of course the proposals are still heavily focused on internal/ecosystem development but there's an increasing focus on building platforms for people in developing regions as well. There has generally been a heavy focus on improving connectivity and access to affordable financial services within the African continent however recently there's been…

Come on. I wish ADA well, but Charles is one self-centered person and the community has erected a cult around him and is super toxic against other projects. After BTC maxis, ADA has the most religious maximalists I would say.

Re: The Problem with Ethereum

#204
post #187

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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."

The reality is that people sit together and try to make a deal that all parties agree on simply because disruption and uncertainty is not in the interests of any of the parties. This doesn't change the fact that the parties do not have aligned interests and therefore its a constant fight everything is slow and expensive because of that.

Kinda funny how this problem was solved before ETH even existed simply by removing the incentive for the hardware operator. No block rewards and no fees to collect aka no reason to fight over it. The only people who run the hardware without getting paid for it are the people who want to use it. They have aligned interest like a fast and cheap network and fast update cycles. And ofc no one who has to pay for the hardware and energy has any interest in PoW.

Re: The Problem with Ethereum

#205
post #193

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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.

Hard fork to what? Gpu PoW? That doesn't work in an adverse environment, considering it would start from zero (gpu mining is almost going to disappear after mining eth ends). In fact existing asic miners could easily rent enough gpus just to kill the new fork by not allowing any transactions.

In fact when LukeJr made a threat of a PoW fork during the segwit activation drama, Chinese miners said they secured enough gpus to kill the fork when it starts.

Re: The Problem with Ethereum

#206
post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

(b) is why Bitcoin core development has stagnated[*]. And that's fine if people just want it to be like gold, however Ethereum doesn't aspire to not evolve. (c) I actually disagree with. Decentralized governance is a very interesting subject, and some cryptos like Tezos are governed quite decentralized in many ways. Right now I'm really confident in how Ethereum is governed, with the "old-fashioned" open-source devel…

> some cryptos like Tezos are governed quite decentralized in many ways. Whenever crypto enthusiasts tell me about DeFi governance, I get excited about the possibilities. Then, I actually take a look at some of the group decisions, and literally all of them are crypto/coin-related, and don’t deal with any /real/ or human problems…

Maybe take a look at Proof of Humanity? proofofhumanity.id. Real world problem (poverty) being tackled by crypto via a DAO. Very early days yet, but fascinating to watch as it evolves.

Re: The Problem with Ethereum

#207
post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Absolutely, not to mention Eth just rolled out a major update last week. This rambling, bizarre article boils down to a few very basic, extremely played out arguments. Argument 1: Proof of stake concentrates wealth more than proof of work. You can make that argument, but POS advocates have for a long time argued that proof of work mining has more economies of scale than proof of stake and therefore the opposite is ac…

I'll preface that I somewhat dislike how Ethereum has established their PoS consensus. The lack of first class support for delegated staking poses a problem IMHO as it requires handing control of your coins over to a third party considering this is the only option for people without 32ETH(102k USD) that they can tie up. I also have opinions on locking periods but until we see some extended battle tests proving where…

But hasn't dPOS shown that people don't care that much about governance and will just hand their coins to someone, anyone who promises to reward them? The current crop of dPOS coins leaves a very stale taste in my mouth as they all seem to be run by an oligarchy of validators who conspire to let no one else in.

Staking services like RocketPool just bring the idea to ETH but if you were early, you can stake on your own.

Re: The Problem with Ethereum

#208
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.

There's certainly a good middle ground between moving slowly and moving quickly, I think Ethereum has found that middle ground. Half of this article is complaints about how Ethereum is moving too slowly with the PoS transition. They're certainly not of the "move fast and break things" mindset.

eth feels like wild west of script kiddies writing javascript to manage billions of USD. far from being middle ground, it's quite the opposite of btc's "let's not ruin the foundation even if we'll be called unnecessarily conservative" stance.

in fact, i would even argue that btc's stance is closer to middle ground as they are clearly working towards making it easier to run all sorts of wild experiments in the upper layers while protecting and minimizing what's going on in the base layer.

Re: The Problem with Ethereum

#209
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.

> the base money of the internet You can't. Be serious. What percentage of internet transactions are performed in Bitcoin? 1%? 0.1%?

how about trying to be more charitable with your interpretations? the statement you're quoting isn't necessarily factual but aspirational.

Re: The Problem with Ethereum

#210

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> (b) is why Bitcoin core development has stagnated. And that's fine if people just want it to be like gold, however Ethereum doesn't aspire to not evolve. How stagnated is Bitcoin development? Yeah it is not progressing super fast, but I think it is still progressing. Taproot has been accepted by miners and will be activated this year. Improvements are being done. As Bitcoin is the biggest crypto by market gap, I th…

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.

https://bitcoinops.org/. bitcoin is far from stagnant, there's a ton of research and development going on, it's just not being treated as "move fast and break things" kind of project.

it is really sad state of affairs when you only consider something as not stagnant when it's constantly putting people's money at tremendous risk.

at least the market seems to understand it.

Post reply on HN