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The Problem with Ethereum

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Re: The Problem with Ethereum

#221

Post by yunohn »

CuriousCosmic wrote: post #118
yunohn wrote: 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…

> I'd recommend looking at Project Catalyst out of the Cardano ecosystem.

Could you maybe provide some examples of these /real/ problems they want to focus on? No DYOR, since you seem to be actually involved in the project.

Providing banking services for under-banked regions is yet again, for the crypto. Avoiding KYC is not a feature; I would argue that developing countries need robust infrastructure that incorporates societal laws, for positive outcomes.

Re: The Problem with Ethereum

#222

Post by yunohn »

jaggs wrote: post #206
yunohn wrote: 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…

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.

“Proof of Humanity, a system combining webs of trust, with reverse Turing tests, and dispute resolution to create a sybil-proof list of humans.”

This is their mission, and the rest of the website focuses on ID and such services. Not one mention of poverty alleviation.

Re: The Problem with Ethereum

#223

Post by tim333 »

denton-scratch wrote: post #103
silasdavis wrote: post #92

There's plenty wrong with Ethereum, but casting miners as 'the working class' is a flawed analogy. The mercantile class would be closer to the mark. Notably, their hashing power is based in real world economic power and they extract an annuity from capital expenditure on mining operations and hardware. I also question whether miners are really providing the labour power, as you might expect the working class to do. T…

> 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…

I think the working class in crypto would be the nocoiners.

Re: The Problem with Ethereum

#224

Post by dragonelite »

jkhdigital wrote: post #216
dragonelite wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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!

An oppressed class has every right to be a asshole.

Re: The Problem with Ethereum

#225

Post by vmception »

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…

I think you and many crypto enthusiasts and crypto skeptics miss the forest because of the trees too

What happened to accepting things as they are simply because it's obvious the market can bear it?

The ideology and sales pitches of that ideology are not really relevant. These are platforms. No different than Shopify being a platform. You build on them, extract value, walk away. Who cares if Shopify - for example - said "our platform is decentralized and fixes clean water in Africa" and it didn't. Who cares? Does it still allow you to extract value? Yes? That's the whole equation. Figure it out at Harvard Business School a decade from now, or figure it out now.

Re: The Problem with Ethereum

#226

Post by h0l0cube »

Dylan16807 wrote: post #126
h0l0cube wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The way that's written like Ethereum owes the miners a job strange I think it's fair that if you've purchased specialized mining equipment, you expect the ROI you were promised. Doesn't seem strange. > Ethereum functions on proof-of-work and needs some people to sell their compute time and electricity So compensation for work. If not 'workers', you could call them 'investors', or perhaps 'sole traders', or 'merchan…

> I think it's fair that if you've purchased specialized mining equipment, you expect the ROI you were promised. Doesn't seem strange. * It uses GPUs. * ROI in terms of ethereum is basically irrelevant. Real ROI depends on the bouncy crazy chart. * Was there not enough warning before the changes?

> It uses GPUs.

Many miners buy purpose built servers for crypto mining.

> Was there not enough warning before the changes?

That's the main plaint of the article, and reiterated multiple times. The article claims that the prices was dropped with 2 of the forks, each time it was promised (including at the very beginning) that changes would never be made. Each fork seemed to be of gain to the people who were part of the ICO, but at an income loss to miners. There were several broken promises of no further forks.

Re: The Problem with Ethereum

#227

Post by jaked89 »

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?

Strawman attack. I didn't mention mining; anyone can purchase crypto.

If you prefer to support the fiat thugs by holding into their tokens, be ready to pay the price.

Re: The Problem with Ethereum

#228

Post by Taek »

silasdavis wrote: post #199
Taek wrote: 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…

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…

Anyone who runs a full node can decide any set of rules they want to follow. You can incentivize miners to mine on your fork by providing block rewards. If you pay people to do something, at least some of them will.

The ETC fork would have been successful at any non-zero support level from people with the ability to mine. And since any CPU can mine (just inefficiently), any fork can get a mining baseline. That may not give you a ton of security but it works.

People who run full nodes are the ones that decide hard forks.

Re: The Problem with Ethereum

#229

Post by Taek »

noxer wrote: post #200
Taek wrote: 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…

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…

Any chain can exist with a single miner on it, and anyone can be that miner. Users do not need the consent of miners to execute a hardfork and migrate to a new chain. Miners do not control or determine hard forks.

This has been demonstrated empirically numerous times in crypto history, most notably the moment that >80% of the hashrate openly supported a hardfork that subsequently failed because it did not have user support.

Your node software decides what fork you run on. If someone can push an update to your software without your consent, they can choose to put you on a fork and you may not even realize it happened. This is why most full node software (including bitcoin and Ethereum) does not support automatic updates.

Re: The Problem with Ethereum

#230

Post by NiloCK »

yunohn wrote: post #222
jaggs wrote: post #206

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

“Proof of Humanity, a system combining webs of trust, with reverse Turing tests, and dispute resolution to create a sybil-proof list of humans.” This is their mission, and the rest of the website focuses on ID and such services. Not one mention of poverty alleviation.

The connection here is that sybil-proofing is a (the?) major bottleneck to cryptoeconomic UBI schemes.
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