Ethereum 2.0 launches • Hacker News Board

Re: Ethereum 2.0 launches

#291

Post by bhaak » Tue, Dec 01, 2020, 4:28 PM UTC

flixic wrote: post #264

eric_cc wrote: post #230

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I just don't see it. Bitcoin could be forked to no longer use PoW if it became an existential threat.

Migrating from PoW took about 2-3 years for Ethereum, required massive changes to economic model, and developing all new clients. Ethereum leadership is still somewhat centralized, so this did not lead to multiple competing forks. Doing the same for Bitcoin would be very hard, and if it simply follows Ethereum's footsteps, then it is unclear why even use Bitcoin. But -- I hope we see this fork sooner rather than late…

I disagree that it would be (technologically) hard for Bitcoin to transition to a PoS (disregarding that we don't have yet conclusive proof if any PoS model actually works long time).

Ethereum is built to a spec. That's why the different client developers had to coordinate their work. This is not the case with Bitcoin. There, the official client is the de-facto spec you have to comply with if you develop another client.

The bigger problem is that the current narrative of Bitcoin heavily discourage hard forks.

Transitioning to PoS would be a social task with Bitcoin, not a technical one. Also note that Ethereum was promised from the beginning to transition to PoS, they just didn't expect to take this long.

Re: Ethereum 2.0 launches

#292

Post by tromp » Tue, Dec 01, 2020, 4:29 PM UTC

konschubert wrote: post #216

thebean11 wrote: post #211

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's your take on off chain solutions like lightning as a solution to the high tx fees?

It doesn't solve the fundamental cost problem with Proof of Work: - If people pay high effective tx fees, it's shit because, well, it's expensive. - If people pay low effective tx fees (through lightning or block size increase or whatever) then, as soon as inflation ends, the money won't be enough to pay for a sufficient hash rate.

PoW doesn't need inflation to end.

Re: Ethereum 2.0 launches

#293

Post by DennisP » Tue, Dec 01, 2020, 4:30 PM UTC

joeblau wrote: post #219

earthtolazlo wrote: post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Bitcoin wastes an obscene amount of energy for a theoretical maximum of seven transactions per second globally. How is that even remotely scalable?

I'm not a Bitcoin advocate, I just recognize the value the invention provided and I recognize that this whole cryptocurrency space relies on it being successful for long enough for anything else usurp it. If Bitcoin got hacked right now, everything crashes with it. Compared to Bitcoin, there are consensus mechanisms that are a lot faster (3 orders of magnitude), cheaper (almost free transaction cost), near instant fi…

Yes, and the production launch of that new consensus mechanism is what happened today on Ethereum. It runs on a minimum of 16K nodes, and last I checked had about 60% more than that.

Re: Ethereum 2.0 launches

#294

Post by tromp » Tue, Dec 01, 2020, 4:35 PM UTC

andrewla wrote: post #212

tormeh wrote: post #31

Is it still deflationary? Wondering if I should invest in the coin itself (which makes sense for deflationary coins) or a company doing something with it (which makes sense for an inflationary coin)

This is a term thrown around a lot. "Deflationary" has different meanings in different contexts. Conventional economists use "deflation" to mean "price deflation" -- that is, the price of goods, on average, decreases over time, as denominated in the currency in question. Austrian (heterodox) economists often use the term "deflation" and "inflation" to refer to changes in the money supply, rather than prices. In the c…

> people often use the term "deflationary" to refer to currencies that do not increase exponentially in supply

People use "deflationary" for hard-capped supplies, "disinflationary" for uncapped supplies that have yearly inflation rate going down toward 0 (such as with a pure linear emission), and "inflationary" for emissions whose yearly inflation rate stay above some constant greater than 0.

Re: Ethereum 2.0 launches

#295

Post by nepthar » Tue, Dec 01, 2020, 4:36 PM UTC

rauljordan2020 wrote: post #246

Eth2 dev here, maintainer of https://github.com/prysmaticlabs/prysm , one of the implementations currently running the blockchain written in Go. This has been a monumental effort. There are 3 other implementations in mainnet, and consensus is running perfectly. Few other protocols in blockchain have more than one dominant implementation. The beauty of eth2 comes from its efficiency in signature aggregation: https://t…

Congrats to you and everyone else! Really cool stuff here :)

Re: Ethereum 2.0 launches

#296

Post by konschubert » Tue, Dec 01, 2020, 4:37 PM UTC

tromp wrote: post #290

flixic wrote: post #260

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Everything I know about cryptocurrencies makes me think you and parent are completely right, and PoW cannot work without inflation (or even with very low inflation, that does not justify the cost of running hardware in the absence of transactions). Just relying on transaction fees should lead to downward spiral of use, where fees are way too high to maintain use, or network security is too low to protect value. I'd l…

PoW can work fine with the inflation rate going to zero, and without relying on transaction fees. All it needs is a constant (or an eventually constant) block reward. An effective zero inflation is already achieved when the new emission merely balances the amount of coins getting lost.

So the amount of value getting lost must be equal or greater the electricity bill for mining.

I see your point but doesn’t sound like a great pitch.

Re: Ethereum 2.0 launches

#297

Post by dirtnugget » Tue, Dec 01, 2020, 4:38 PM UTC

zadler wrote: post #252

dirtnugget wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, as far as I understood the time between blocks in a PoS chain is basically just a timer (e.g. 10 seconds). There is no need to adjust that dynamically because there is no "race" to solve a problem. I guess it is even more predictable if it is not dynamically adjusted.

But that does have to be enforced via incentives/cryptography, and with reference to a clock.

Well it is enforced by the protocol on which all node agree and there needs to be a mechanism for syncing clocks across nodes (also defined by the protocol) but they exist, e.g. https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/8946264

Not 100% sure what ETH is using here but there is a mechanism.

If someone would want to fake timestamps, they would need to deviate from the protocol and would thus not be on chain.

Re: Ethereum 2.0 launches

#298

Post by selectodude » Tue, Dec 01, 2020, 4:42 PM UTC

KSteffensen wrote: post #278

gnarcoregrizz wrote: post #257

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No KYC Offline account creation Instantly liquid programmable assets Programmable banking Financial censorship resistant Micro finance Anyone can use it, it’s surprisingly simple You could create your own company+shares if you want and they can be instantly available on any market. Ever tried trading a penny stock, or an international stock? It takes forever to open an account at a brokerage where they may or may not…

> No KYC I don't know what KYC is but I'm not US based. Sounds like some fee that's peculiar to US banking environment (which I have heard is extraordinarily bureaucratic). >Instantly liquid programmable assets Another example of opaque blockchain jargon. Maybe it makes sense, but not as a way to convert the sceptical. >Programmable banking I can currently program transfers to happen regularly every month on a certai…

>I don't know what KYC is but I'm not US based. Sounds like some fee that's peculiar to US banking environment (which I have heard is extraordinarily bureaucratic).

KYC stands for Know Your Customer, basically anti-money laundering regulations. Banks need to have a decent grasp on whether or not the money they're working with was "earned" legitimately.

>Is this a feature? Don't we as a society want a way to control e.g. drug lords and tax evaders moving their money around?

See above :)

Disclaimer: I think cryptocurrencies are a spillover from a couple decades of inflationary monetary policy from the fed causing people to seek yield in more and more esoteric forms. I also think they're stupid.

Re: Ethereum 2.0 launches

#299

Post by nootropicat » Tue, Dec 01, 2020, 4:43 PM UTC

hiq wrote: post #282

nootropicat wrote: post #235

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Loans are overcollateralized and collateral is automatically liquidated once the collateral ratio falls below the liquidation threshold. Eg. for eth as collateral the liquidation threshold is 75%, meaning $75 borrowed for $100 in collateral. Compound itself has survived multiple violent price crashes and lenders didn't lose anything.

To be clear, you mean that I can borrow $75 by giving $100 first, then pay back the $75 with interest and get back my $100? Why don't I use my $100 directly instead? There are a few cases outside the blockchain where you get loans although you already have the cash (e.g. for tax reasons), but I don't understand how it makes financial sense in this case, if everything happens on the blockchain with no other incentive.…

>Why don't I use my $100 directly instead?

Because it's not $100 in dollars, but $100 worth of eth or something else. Borrowed dollars can be used to buy something else, hoping the price of that something rises.

>as a lender, for which risk are you getting paid some interest?

It's theoretically possible for prices to fall fast enough so that the liquidated value of the collateral isn't enough to pay the debt. I don't think rewards are risk adjusted at all. More like same people that could provide dollars are likely to speculate on cryptocurrencies themselves, or take part in more risky and active yield generating schemes.

Re: Ethereum 2.0 launches

#300

Post by purerandomness » Tue, Dec 01, 2020, 4:43 PM UTC

michaelsbradley wrote: post #288

pmachinery wrote: post #182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why am I paying fees if there's no middle-person?

Assuming you mean transaction fees on the Bitcoin and Ethereum (or similar) networks: Transaction fees are an important economic inventive for persons or organizations who run the “nodes” that make up the network. The hardware, electricity, and maintenance by humans needed to run those nodes cost money, and running them is not an altruistic endeavor. One of the goals is to make a profit; staking/mining rewards and tr…

Wait, but then we went full-circle again.

What problem is cryptocurrency solving then?