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The Problem with Ethereum

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Re: The Problem with Ethereum

#211

Post by iSnow »

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…

Honestly, that's where the article becomes totally bizarre. ETH is now worth in fiat 3000x more than in 2015, and miner's expenditures are in fiat. So instead of cutting mining rewards by say 95%, it got cut by 25% and that's somehow evil?

Miners don't earn 40% less, they earn 180000% more than back then. Of course not individual miners, but as a "working class".

Re: The Problem with Ethereum

#212

Post by cblconfederate »

dash2 wrote: post #7

"Something here seems awfully similar to the system that crypto-currency was meant to fix. It was meant to eliminate rulers. It was meant to make everyone accountable for their actions. It was meant to reward the intelligent, the hard working and the capable, and not reward the incompetent, or the makers-yet-breakers of promises. However, this repeat of the broken old system seems to be playing out again." One respon…

gold is law (as in, overwhelmingly subject to physics laws) and it has survived for millenia. Whatever social problems caused people to move away from it, after some time they kept going back

Re: The Problem with Ethereum

#213

Post by iSnow »

amarant wrote: post #136

A lot of comments here criticise the analogies made in the post. While the criticism might be correct, I feel this is like missing the forest because of the trees.. Etherium, and most crypto-currencies for that matter, were initially made to fix a broken financial system, where banks unjustly control too much wealth, and changes the rules so that they will always control too much wealth. Etherium does not fix this, i…

Well, maybe it is time to think about whether currency is really the killer usecase for crypto. I used to but not anymore. ETH is much more useful as a global, standardized back-end technology for finance, so I'm kinda sad the "ultrasound money" trope is catching on, IMO that's what BTC should try to be.

Oh, and BTW, it's called "Ethereum". Not "Etherium".

Re: The Problem with Ethereum

#214

Post by iSnow »

jstx1 wrote: post #179
Tepix wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How many hardforks has the core bitcoin project seen in the last five years? Bitcoin has been incapable of doing a hardfork for whatever reason for a while. That's why it will disappear sooner or later. If you don't evolve, you die.

> How many hardforks has the core bitcoin project seen in the last five years? Can you elaborate on this - why would the core project care how many times it's forked? The forks shouldn't affect the core project at all, that's the whole point of having a fork in the first place. Or alternatively, if you like and use the fork, then you aren't on the core bitcoin chain anymore. Either way the main BTC chain doesn't care…

>why would the core project care how many times it's forked?

Some changes (eg. to the block reward schedule) are only possible on a hard fork as it makes the main chain incompatible with the pre-fork chain.

That's the philosophical difference between the projects: ETH is not afraid of hard forks and to this date, they have been uncontested. BTC never considers a hard fork and has had at least two major contested ones.

Re: The Problem with Ethereum

#215

Post by jstx1 »

iSnow wrote: post #214
jstx1 wrote: post #179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> How many hardforks has the core bitcoin project seen in the last five years? Can you elaborate on this - why would the core project care how many times it's forked? The forks shouldn't affect the core project at all, that's the whole point of having a fork in the first place. Or alternatively, if you like and use the fork, then you aren't on the core bitcoin chain anymore. Either way the main BTC chain doesn't care…

>why would the core project care how many times it's forked? Some changes (eg. to the block reward schedule) are only possible on a hard fork as it makes the main chain incompatible with the pre-fork chain. That's the philosophical difference between the projects: ETH is not afraid of hard forks and to this date, they have been uncontested. BTC never considers a hard fork and has had at least two major contested ones…

Do you have some technical definition for "contested" or are you using it as a generic term to describe how the forks were perceived by the rest of the community?

Re: The Problem with Ethereum

#216

Post by jkhdigital »

dragonelite wrote: post #116
denton-scratch wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> There's plenty wrong with Ethereum, but casting miners as 'the working class' is a flawed analogy. Agreed. Marx's working class consists of those who do not own means of production, and are therefore compelled to sell their labour. Miners do not lack means of production; they operate expensive mining machinery. That machinery continues to run, and earn money for the miner, even while the miner sits on the beach. Se…

The two class cycles workers cycle: Commodity(labor) -> Money -> Commodity(food, housing bills) Capitalists cycle: Money -> Commodity(means of production) -> Money(profit/surplus value) At least that is the bit that kind of sticked to me and made me realized in the west you want to do the second cycle. Earn money by selling labor, live life as a cheap ass for a while use savings to become a asshole landlord.

> use savings to become a asshole landlord

Being an asshole is not a requirement for landlords, nor is it exclusive to them. Oppressed workers can be assholes too!

Re: The Problem with Ethereum

#217

Post by iSnow »

kevingadd wrote: post #175
jaked89 wrote: post #168

Early crypto adopters are freedom minded people. I have no problem with a new economic system where the wealthiest are the most freedom-oriented. If crypto ever replaces the current monetary system, late adopters will have to fight for crumbles. And that's OK; you support deception & violence, so you stay poor. That's cosmic justice.

So if I'm understanding you correctly, "late adopters" including people who don't have money for mining hardware/coins or don't even own a computer, just a phone - deserve to be poor because not buying in to crypto is supporting "deception and violence"? What's the logic here?

The logic of Bitcoin maximalists who already revel in dreams that one day, they will relocate to remote islands or citadels while watching the world burn down.

Any human with a moral compass would shudder at the thought of a collapse of Western democracy, but not them: they giggle in anticipation of becoming the new ruling class or at least an exclusive society of mega-rich while those who doubted the Bitcoin religion will have to prostitute their daughters to the nouveau riche.

"Have fun staying poor" is their battle cry. In their twisted libertarian world view, people forced by hunger to toil day in, day out is not violence, but the state taxing incomes is.

Re: The Problem with Ethereum

#218

Post by iSnow »

dcow wrote: post #19

I lost interest in Eth when the “code is law” law was broken. I’m glad I did. I don’t believe proof of steak is the correct solution to the energy required for proof of work. To be clear, a lot of good insight has come from Eth, but I’m not ideologically bought in anymore. Recently I have been exploring Chia as a farmer. Rather than the ruling class being a group devs and random early miners, the ruling class is a (s…

Chia seems completely brain-dead. Buying up HDs and SSDs to fill them with junk data and getting coins for that. In what universe does that make sense?

I'd rather support Bitcoin miners as they only cause an ASIC shortage, a SSD shortage is much worse for me.

Re: The Problem with Ethereum

#219

Post by amarant »

ikt wrote: post #146
amarant wrote: post #136

A lot of comments here criticise the analogies made in the post. While the criticism might be correct, I feel this is like missing the forest because of the trees.. Etherium, and most crypto-currencies for that matter, were initially made to fix a broken financial system, where banks unjustly control too much wealth, and changes the rules so that they will always control too much wealth. Etherium does not fix this, i…

> Etherium, and most crypto-currencies for that matter, were initially made to fix a broken financial system No? Buterin argued to the bitcoin core developers that Bitcoin and blockchain technology could benefit from other applications besides money and needed a more robust language for application development that could lead to attaching real-world assets, such as stocks and property, to the blockchain.[15] It's lik…

But the only kind of application that would even theoretically benefit of running on the Blockchain is a finance application, and it's not better at that than the current system. In fact, it's worse.

The whole idea of "code is law" is deeply flawed, and I think the hard forks prove that. The problem then is that smaller financial injustices that do not get the attention of the core Devs, will go unchecked and unfixed forever.

The idea of zero trust financial applications is intriguing, but in practice "zero trust" means "trust Vitalik", and to be honest, I trust my current bank more than I trust some random dude in the internet, thank you very much. (Not that I'm a fan of my current bank, they suck, just slightly less than any alternative I'm aware of)

I know some people develop other kinds of applications too, but I completely fail to see the point of running (for example) a video game on the Blockchain other than the novelty..

Re: The Problem with Ethereum

#220

Post by iSnow »

jstx1 wrote: post #215
iSnow wrote: post #214

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>why would the core project care how many times it's forked? Some changes (eg. to the block reward schedule) are only possible on a hard fork as it makes the main chain incompatible with the pre-fork chain. That's the philosophical difference between the projects: ETH is not afraid of hard forks and to this date, they have been uncontested. BTC never considers a hard fork and has had at least two major contested ones…

Do you have some technical definition for "contested" or are you using it as a generic term to describe how the forks were perceived by the rest of the community?

Well, of course I forgot the ETC HF, that one was indeed contested. But yeah, generic for a HF out of differences that cannot be reconciled and which leads to a viable new project like BCash, BSV, ETC.
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