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Vitalik escalates ETH 2.0 merge as miners plan a 51% attack

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Re: Vitalik escalates ETH 2.0 merge as miners plan a 51% attack

#431

Post by dwild »

throwaway4good wrote: post #370
throwaway4good wrote: post #365

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Vitalik and friends can just sell their coins on the proof of work chain and thus make it unattractive.

However you could change the protocol / software and block the addresses of people who don't support the PoW chain. It would be a bit messy. However if you are sitting with a massive ETH mining rig, you would like to do something with your hardware.

> However if you are sitting with a massive ETH mining rig, you would like to do something with your hardware.

You would like to profit from your hardware*.

That's an important distinction, as what make you profit from your hardware, isn't running it on ETH in particular, it's running it on a cryptocurrency which is used. They could run it on ETC currently if they want to keep mining, but they don't as ETH represents more value. So whether they keep running on the fork is more about whether the cash will be there to mine on it and my impression is that it won't be there.

Currently there's quite a big smear campaign on the environment impact of cryptocurrency on the world. This is important for many people, thus will impact whatever they decide to do.

There was also always a preference toward the forks supported by the official developers. It's normal, as long as we have no reason to doubt their decisions, why change? In this case this is even more true as it's not questioning the decision, the intention is clear that it's about the miner hardware.

Let not forget also that this fork will be supported by peoples that proved that they could orchestrate a 51% attack for their own gains... which is pretty much the fear that was always there on cryptocurrencies...

There's no reason to believe people would go toward a fork, thus there won't be much value in mining on that fork versus any alternative cryptocurrency. If I was a miner, I would start selling my graphic cards... they are still sold for quite a bit of money currently and it's just a matter of time before the price crash and it become easy again to buy a new graphic card.

Re: Vitalik escalates ETH 2.0 merge as miners plan a 51% attack

#432

Post by olouv »

guiomie wrote: post #44

It's interesting that miners are protesting EIP-1559 proposal, which is burning away transaction fees as opposed to giving them to miners, while for the last years Eth has focused on completely eliminating miners with proof of stake. Why not protest the latter? What am I missing? Regardless, I sold all my mining equipment 2 years ago when it was clear that Eth was moving to PoS, mining alt-coins wasnt something I was…

One theory is that they have planned to fork when POS does arrive but don’t want to have to rollback upgrades like EIP-1559 as it would negatively impact optics vs. keeping alive the “true original” ETH.

Re: Vitalik escalates ETH 2.0 merge as miners plan a 51% attack

#433

Post by nvlr »

jkhdigital wrote: post #399
CryptoPunk wrote: post #179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>>The Ethereum miners have unionized, however, so now you are negotiating with the miner unions to pay what they think is their "fair share." Unlike with employers and real world unions, the Ethereum network is not bound by labor laws to negotiate exclusively with unionized miners, or refrain from replacing them with non-unionized miners. Without those laws, unions are pretty powerless, which is why the late 19th cen…

> The initial plan of Ethereum was to launch with Proof of Work, and very quickly afterwards switch to Proof of Stake And that’s the problem... it’s a bait and switch, because the miners had to bear the capital costs of investing in mining rigs, which would suddenly lose a lot of value in a switch to PoS. I think this is the original sin of Ethereum, and the network will be forever plagued by conflict because of it.

Not really a bait of switch though since Ethereum has always been very clear that this is the plan. Anyone who bought a rig should have known that they had a limited investment horizon.

Re: Vitalik escalates ETH 2.0 merge as miners plan a 51% attack

#434

Post by _7fvc »

CameronNemo wrote: post #426
_7fvc wrote: post #237

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because real world assets don't get minted like crypto. They are tied to physical world. They are volatile. Bitcoin produces a block every 10 minutes. It's a fairly precise schedule. On the other hand, real world assets grow and contract at unpredictable rates. Even gold mining fluctuates. The real world is volatile. The BTCUSD peg is free floating. It's also volatile. Crypto is rigid. Real world is volatile. It's ha…

I'm not saying it will be an exact peg. I am saying that colored coins can represent specific batches of a real world asset. For example gold mined from a specific mine by a specific company from date x to date y. That company would also create the colored coins that represent a claim to the gold mined. They could even mint the coins ahead of time and they would act as futures on the output of the mine during that ti…

It's difficult to build layers on top of the Bitcoin blockchain. The base asset, Bitcoin, is volatile. Its volatility affects the assets on 2nd layers. There isn't a one-one peg between the 2nd layer and the base chain. You'd need to trust an oracle. In your gold example, you'd need to trust the miner for authenticity and their books. For use-cases with oracles, it's more efficient to use a database. There's no need to use a blockchain.

Some projects on Ethereum, like DAI, have explored these use-cases. I think they have not been successful. DAI requires high reserve ratio (1-1.5) to manage the volatility of the base chain. You're using 1.5 USD to get 1 USDDAI. It's not very efficient. I'm less excited about assets on blockchain. I think the market is not ready. We need to reduce volatility first.

Re: Vitalik escalates ETH 2.0 merge as miners plan a 51% attack

#435

Post by _7fvc »

delaaxe wrote: post #373
_7fvc wrote: post #237

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because real world assets don't get minted like crypto. They are tied to physical world. They are volatile. Bitcoin produces a block every 10 minutes. It's a fairly precise schedule. On the other hand, real world assets grow and contract at unpredictable rates. Even gold mining fluctuates. The real world is volatile. The BTCUSD peg is free floating. It's also volatile. Crypto is rigid. Real world is volatile. It's ha…

BTCUSD is a pair, not a "peg"

Sorry, it's not a guaranteed peg. It's more like a conversion.

Re: Vitalik escalates ETH 2.0 merge as miners plan a 51% attack

#436

Post by TacticalCoder »

rauljordan2020 wrote: post #168

I'm one of the maintainers of one of the implementations of eth2 live today ( https://github.com/prysmaticlabs/prysm ) and can help offer more context on this. Ethereum proof of stake has been live since December 1st and it currently secures over 6 billion USD worth of value https://beaconcha.in/ . Currently, this is a chain that lives in parallel to the proof of work chain we know as Ethereum today. The idea is that…

What really surprises me is how in bad faith the PoW miners are acting. Ethereum was, from day one, planning to transition to PoS once the research and proof-of-concept was working. If anything the Ethereum PoW miners have been very lucky in that Ethereum is kinda late on its roadmap to switch to PoS (at least compared to when first announced).

Re: Vitalik escalates ETH 2.0 merge as miners plan a 51% attack

#437

Post by _7fvc »

seibelj wrote: post #125
_7fvc wrote: post #118

Bitcoin, Ethereum, and cryptocurrency spawn a generation of people who worship Austrian economics. This ETH upgrade is making ETH even more deflationary. People are obsessed with price and want to pump the numbers. These wars are not doing anything to advance adoption and bring freedom to people. Crypto builders are pumping the coins under the banners of freedom and decentralization. The problem with crypto is volati…

What does “worship” mean? I am a believer of the Austrian theory of economics. Are Keynesian / Monetarists also “worshippers” of a theory? Modern economics is not that old. I fundamentally believe printing as much money as we are across the rich world is going to lead to disaster, just as it has time and again in the developing world (see Venezuela, Zimbabwe, Argentina, Brazil, etc.). If anything, Austrian economics…

Keynesians think money grows on tree. It is true in some senses. Apples grow on tree. At the extreme, they think money is imaginary. They can print as much as they want.

Austrians think money grows from hard money. It is also true in some senses. Money is made from money. It's circular and Ponzi-like. It requires you to believe in what hard money is. Austrian thinking leads to some cult-like behaviors. At the extreme, they'd be rent-seeking their precious Store of Value. It's just as evil as the Keynesians.

Money is data (Keynesian) with some kind of illusions (Austrian). The money that we need is between the Keynesians and Austrians.

Re: Vitalik escalates ETH 2.0 merge as miners plan a 51% attack

#438

Post by CrackpotGonzo »

herbst wrote: post #271
seibelj wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are many people who understand Ethereum and the larger blockchain / cryptocurrency ecosystem. I have made my career and wealth in this space. What you won’t find are tons of people like me on Hacker News. This website has a toxic reputation in the crypto world given its intensely negative attitude towards this industry. I love HN. Probably the website I check most. But I have tried so hard to understand why the…

Same here. Crypto literally is the best thing that happened carrier wise to my life. From the wild wild west in the early days that allowed anyone to make some beermoney then (and be rich today if they holded) to the immense community we have today that turn simple products/dapps/whatever into millions strong businesses over night. Crypto is exactly the movement to give power back to the people (for a while at least)…

Where would you tell a crypto noob to start today?

Re: Vitalik escalates ETH 2.0 merge as miners plan a 51% attack

#439

Post by yokem55 »

ntr-- wrote: post #136
Sargos wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

ETH is money but it's not currency. It's not meant to be used to buy everyday goods and services.

It is meant to be spent as gas in order to compensate for the energy costs of the computations in its smart-contracts. Why expend some amount of ETH building and executing products when you can just HODL and wait for the price to go up? Additionally, ease of spending drives up adoption which is a clear benefit to any currency.

Because while the fee burn does act as a deflationary force on the eth economy, there is still the inflationary force of the staking rewards. If transaction volume falls too much, then the staking rewards will outpace the fees burned and the eth economy will see overall inflation. At some point (insert hand-waivium here) an equilibrium will be reached between transaction demand, eth asset price, and staking demand (as more eth is staked, individual staking returns will fall, but overall inflation goes up).

Re: Vitalik escalates ETH 2.0 merge as miners plan a 51% attack

#440

Post by lupire »

Zetaphor wrote: post #424
proto-n wrote: post #281

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Afaik there's no plan to attack, they are planning a "show of force", i.e. get more then 51% in a pool for a while without doing anything with the power. This is separate from either adapting or not adapting the fork itself and happens before the fork. The original chain has to be forked either way, with or without eip 1559 because the "ice age" coded into the current version (it's in there for this exact reason). So…

"We're not going to 51% attack the network. We're just going to allocate 51% of the hashrate into a single pool to demonstrate that we could 51% attack the network" Why should this threat of violence be treated differently than the act itself? Miners are threatening to do the one thing their entire existence is supposed to prevent. They're cutting off their noses to spite their faces, instead of enjoying another year…

"attack" is a misnomer. 51% is a majority vote.
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