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Make Ethereum Cypherpunk Again

vitalik.eth.limo

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Re: Make Ethereum Cypherpunk Again

#31

Post by throwaway2562 »

livueta wrote: post #6
hanniabu wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Non-blockchain decentralization projects are often chronically underfunded, blockchain-based projects get a 50-million dollar series B round. It is not from the benevolence of the staker that we get people to put in their ETH to protect the Ethereum network, but rather from their regard to their own self-interest - and we get $20 billion in economic security as a result.

I think time has demonstrated that some form of (possibly itself centralized to some degree) incentive system can be important for a healthy decentralized ecosystem, but it doesn't necessarily have to be directly monetary: private trackers do pretty well with ratio systems, even through they're not wholly decentralized in the classical sense. I think this has a slightly ironic benefit in practice: by paying out in-ki…

> Scene respect is the sort of in-kind pseudocurrency that, while not without its own flaws, ime incentivizes better art.

Interesting. Let me disagree though. As an intangible, unquantifiable pseudocurrency - we’re getting into the realm where currency-as-analogy sounds both pointed and on-topic, but is a somewhat strained analogy - ‘scene respect’ is as corrosive, perverting and uh… pervertible as any other incentive. It breeds quasi-religions, staffed by gurus and followers, blighted by orthodoxies and schisms. All of which the pre- and post-bust cryptoverse has. All of which seem to matter very little when real money arrives, which it may well again.

Re: Make Ethereum Cypherpunk Again

#32

Post by beaned »

AlexandrB wrote: post #10
kylebenzle wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are right but it is by design. From day one Satoshi had a road map to scale BTC to Visa-like levels while keeping TX fees around a penny. Just incrementally increase the block size over time. Soon after Blockstream's Greg Maxwell and Adam Back hijacked the Bitcoin Core GitHub repo they locked down the block size to 1mb, something Satoshi and the original devs never imagined anyone being dumb enough to do let alon…

> Soon after Blockstream's Greg Maxwell and Adam Back hijacked the Bitcoin Core GitHub repo they locked down the block size to 1mb, something Satoshi and the original devs never imagined anyone being dumb enough to do let alone intended. Doesn't this point to Bitcoin's decentralized nature being largely smoke and mirrors? You're claiming that just two individuals have had a significant negative impact on a project th…

Increasing block size decreases decentralization. (Or rather, increases centralization.) Satoshi's true vision was that decentralization was a prerequisite for everything else. Block size increases presuppose infinite scaling of bandwidth, processing speed, and storage, but we do not have that. Because those things are scarce, block size must be as well, if the goal is to maintain decentralization.

Also in the end it doesn't matter what is in the Bitcoin Core github. It's a network and you can run any variant you want. Bitcoin Cash tried and failed, because in the end it is not what the users, the node operators, chose to adopt.

Re: Make Ethereum Cypherpunk Again

#33

Post by chrisco255 »

mattdesl wrote: post #19
Animats wrote: post #16

"Use DEXes plus stablecoins" The trouble is, neither of those make money if run honestly. A true distributed exchange never has custody of anything. So there's no opportunity to steal or speculate with customer funds. (Front-running remains a possibility). It's just a back-end data service. It has to charge a commission. Most crypto exchanges are free to use; they make money either by stealing or manipulation. Much t…

How problematic is a 0.3% fee? If the two options were otherwise equal, I think most users would rather pay that than deal with potentially losing their funds altogether due to fraud or insolvency.

It's not problematic unless the pairs are highly correlated or one is doing high frequency trading. Ever since Uni v3 in 2021 though, LPs can set lower fees on pairs, as low as 0.01%.

Uniswap has done almost $2 trillion in volume over the past 4 years.

Re: Make Ethereum Cypherpunk Again

#34

Post by beaned »

lawn wrote: post #12
thepasswordis wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Bitcoin Cash (BCH) stayed with the road map and has worked great with low fees for over a decade now. BTC twisted itself into a digital ponzi scheme for morons. I believe most people call this bcash.

Only those that want to throw dirt at the project in order to legitimize the development direction of BTC. And those who are clueless and just follow the hivemind.

Well what's BTC and what isn't? The bcash people still desperately cling to the r/btc handle for their subreddit.

Re: Make Ethereum Cypherpunk Again

#35

Post by AniseAbyss »

instagraham wrote: post #14
try_the_bass wrote: post #5

> Having lived through that era, the number one culprit that I would blame as the root cause of this shift is the rise in transaction fees. Haha no, the number one culprit is that 99% of blockchain projects are either scams, bullshit, not actually decentralized, or simply fail despite pulling in vast amounts of funding (sometimes more than one of the above!). However, I do agree that most--if not all--problems in the…

I don't see any possible usecase for crypto if a 100-200$ gas fee during high demand is considered acceptable. You can make anything in the world but if you have transaction fees that high every single time that project will be guaranteed to fail.

[dead]

Re: Make Ethereum Cypherpunk Again

#36

Post by akritrime »

Animats wrote: post #25
akritrime wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A truly distributed exchange is a protocol and a protocol doesn't really need to make money though. Atleast not in the same way as an exchange needs to. It's only cost is R&D. The users of the protocol pays the fee for both execution and storage, so there is no cost on the exchange side. Ofcourse there is the cost of running a frontend or providing your powerusers easy access to trading data, but that could be a paid…

A distributed exchange is a matching service. The trade execution is distributed. But somebody has to maintain the order book and means for distributing and displaying it. When there's a match, something tells two smart contracts to talk to each other and go. The blockchain itself is not a matching engine.

There are two things. First, a distributed exchange can be built around an AMM, so match making is essentially lazy because you are selling into and buying from an automated liquidity pool, instead of depending on market makers and matching orders. Second, there are order book based protocols that implement order matching as a decentralized consensus mechanism. So the blockchain itself can be a matching engine, provided that's what it's execution environment is built to do.

Underlying all the buzzwords, blockchains are about distributed communications with economic incentives attached to them and a more complex leader election mechanism. So there can be many things that can have the term blockchain slapped on them with a bit of tweaking.

Re: Make Ethereum Cypherpunk Again

#37

Post by zmgsabst »

monero-xmr wrote: post #7

My user name is a reference to one of the hardcore cypherpunk coins https://www.getmonero.org/ They also run the cryptocurrency village at Defcon. Monero researchers have figured out how to do true atomic swaps between Bitcoin and monero, ensuring the exchange delistings will not kill the ultimate privacy coin https://eprint.iacr.org/2020/1126.pdf Finally, the IRS offered a bounty if you could trace XMR. Not claimed…

Okay — sell me on why I should use this coin.

(I feel inclined to agree, but I want more solid reasoning.)

Re: Make Ethereum Cypherpunk Again

#38

Post by mattdesl »

Animats wrote: post #24
mattdesl wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How problematic is a 0.3% fee? If the two options were otherwise equal, I think most users would rather pay that than deal with potentially losing their funds altogether due to fraud or insolvency.

For active traders, huge.

Sure, but even then, not all traders. Preference will depend on risk tolerance and other factors. The point is: just because there is a 0.3% fee (or lower, as sibling comment noted), does not mean this option will never be viable or preferable to many users.

Re: Make Ethereum Cypherpunk Again

#39

Post by yokem55 »

jongjong wrote: post #20
try_the_bass wrote: post #5

> Having lived through that era, the number one culprit that I would blame as the root cause of this shift is the rise in transaction fees. Haha no, the number one culprit is that 99% of blockchain projects are either scams, bullshit, not actually decentralized, or simply fail despite pulling in vast amounts of funding (sometimes more than one of the above!). However, I do agree that most--if not all--problems in the…

The high transaction fees are intentional and a symptom of a sick system which allows people to profit from inefficiency. The higher the transaction fees, the more validators earn. There is no incentive to build tech which will lower transaction fees, even though it would enable practical use cases. Ethereum community is not interested in value creation because they know that value creation doesn't pay. They can earn…

> The higher the transaction fees, the more validators earn.

Not really. 95% of the gas fees get burned and do not go to the validators at all. Only the 'tip' or 'priority fee' goes to the validators and even that is barely anything. Most of the transaction related income validators get is from MEV - basically bribes to order transactions in the block in a particular manner allowing arbitrageurs to extract additional value. These bribes are somewhat correlated to the level of the gas fees, but not always.

Re: Make Ethereum Cypherpunk Again

#40

Post by tw04 »

lawn wrote: post #15
AlexandrB wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Soon after Blockstream's Greg Maxwell and Adam Back hijacked the Bitcoin Core GitHub repo they locked down the block size to 1mb, something Satoshi and the original devs never imagined anyone being dumb enough to do let alone intended. Doesn't this point to Bitcoin's decentralized nature being largely smoke and mirrors? You're claiming that just two individuals have had a significant negative impact on a project th…

Yes and no. They didn't just control the repo, but they somehow managed to convince the miners to support them. Exchanges and users simply defaulted to "the longest chain is Bitcoin", ensuring their victory. So they weren't alone. But Bitcoin's truly decentralized nature allows for forks, where if you disagree with the development direction you can always go your own way. So the spirit of Bitcoin lives on in other pr…

That’s like saying democracy allows voters in the US to elect anyone. Sure, on paper, but here in the real world that’s just not happening. With a few minor tweaks like ranked choice, it could, but the powers that be will never get onboard.

Similarly bitcoin is decentralized in that “anyone can fork it” but reality is without backing from major players, that will never gain any traction at all.

So no, functionally it is nothing approaching decentralized.

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