I expect the major stakers to find themselves looking at OFAC sanctions in about 48 hours contingent on implementing strict AML/KYC procedures.
The Ethereum merge is done
441–450 of 1001 posts
Re: The Ethereum merge is done
#442Earlier quoted context omitted.
> But this change also means that "Decentralisation" and "Power to the people" are fading away right? But it was always like this, also with proof of work. PoS and PoW are both just variations of "proof of resources", which in turn is a convenient substitution for likelihood that one's voting power is independent. If you want to give "power to the people", you need some way of estimating independent voting power, tha…
> If you want to give "power to the people", you need some way of estimating independent voting power, that is not tied to resources. You mean like a democracy?
Except that with blockchain solutions, you generally try to preserve anonymity. (as also elaborated on in other comments in this thread)
Re: The Ethereum merge is done
#443Congrats to the devs. This is a historic moment for computing and distributed tech, and will pave the way for Ethereum’s next updates: scalability, privacy, stronger censorship resistance, easier UX and account abstraction.
> This is a historic moment for computing A) Really? B) Bit early to be proclaiming historic events. On account of, well, history is very much post-tense.
Yes, of course this is my opinion. The transition has been years in the making and the amount of research and contributions to computing, distributed systems, and cryptography that this transition has created has been immense.
Re: The Ethereum merge is done
#444Prior to the merge ethereum’s trust was controlled by the organizations with the most money who bought/built massive data centers to mine it.
With the merge & staking that abstraction layer has disappeared and it’s still the organizations with the most money who control it.
Sure it’s great that non-productive math problems no longer need to be solved & consume so much energy and hardware to make it all work. And it may be an incremental improvement over traditional global finance because there is a much greater ability to publicly scrutinize what goes on.
But no one should consider this a fundamental paradigm shift & democratization compare to traditional financial systems controlled by a a very small number of big players. Their influence still can override the mining process that’s supposed to be the final word on transactions.
Although I’ll clarify a bit: I’m actually a proponent of having a layer of human judgement that can fix a problem when things go off the rails. The issue is that in crypto this layer is even less accessible to smaller players than in traditional finance. The DAO was able to throw its weight around and get a hard fork, but how many other groups with much less influence have suffered from similar problems and exploits without that same benefit?
Yes, even in traditional finance there are some types of irreversible fraud. But for every day transactions, for using money as a daily part of transactions necessary to live your life and not just as a speculative investment, crypto falls far short.
If a criminal spies on my credit card # as I make a purchase and uses that to go on a spending spree I can fix it with the credit card company with little cost but a few hours of time and frustration. If my wallet is pick pocketed or I simply lose it by accident I have a similar recourse to mitigate the fallout. Crypto? No. It may, eventually, have some other benefits though that’s yet to be seen. But as a major change & liberation of people from massively powerful banks and governments there seems to be nothing more that shouted rhetoric and wishful thinking.
Re: The Ethereum merge is done
#445Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'm in the same boat. However, I'm holding strong in being ignorant, as I believe crypto is a fad with no inherent value. I'm an avid reader and learner, but only if the topic is interesting or makes sense. Cryptocoins meet neither of those criteria -to me-. That can be difficult if you read tech news like us, but it will give me a small twinge of joy if I live longer than crypto. Guess we'll see.
I think there are a few common misconceptions that make people not understand the real value crypto is bringing to the table. Many in tech look at crypto, and blockchain specifically as if it is another technicalogical capability they can integrate into their enterprise architecture. From that perspective blockchain in general doesn't really make sense. As cool as the composability of tokens and smart contracts are,…
So digital like nft?
I'm waiting for a good relevant use Case.
Haven't found one yet which is purely digital.
Re: The Ethereum merge is done
#446Earlier quoted context omitted.
Here is a good video that basically explains everything: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bBC-nXj3Ng4 This is not a very good explanation, but basically, you can have a "currency" using just asymmetric key cryptography: users simply sign "transactions". The problem is that you need a central authority to confirm the order of transactions, otherwise the recipient of a "transaction" will not know if the funds associated…
Is there any research on cryptomoney with central authorities, but also with reduced attack surfaces on a whole system? E.g. authority may be cryptographically bound in some way to only store the database and emit new tokens, but cannot spend them because they get freeze-signed by a receiver to their wallet. Then when you get a payment you check the path of money and algorithmically accept that path only. Anyone who…
Perhaps CBDCs (Central bank digital currencies) are close to what you're looking at, the concept being digital money issued and verified by a central authority. There's been a bunch of research done by the central banks of various countries e.g.
https://www.bankofengland.co.uk/research/digital-currencies
https://www.federalreserve.gov/central-bank-digital-currency...
Re: The Ethereum merge is done
#447Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'm in the same boat. However, I'm holding strong in being ignorant, as I believe crypto is a fad with no inherent value. I'm an avid reader and learner, but only if the topic is interesting or makes sense. Cryptocoins meet neither of those criteria -to me-. That can be difficult if you read tech news like us, but it will give me a small twinge of joy if I live longer than crypto. Guess we'll see.
In otehr words: You have "faith" that cryptocurrencies are a fad, right? Some people spent dozens, maybe hundreds of hours understanding everything behind it, and those people colectivelly made Bitcoin worth what it is today. You can continue to have "faith" in this having no value. But if everyone around you start using Bitcoin, would you rather switch your faith to what the others around you believe? Or you rather…
>and those people colectivelly made Bitcoin worth what it is today
No, rampant speculation made that.
Re: The Ethereum merge is done
#448I appreciate it wasting less precious energy. But this change also means that "Decentralisation" and "Power to the people" are fading away right? The wealthy actors are the ones dictating the transaction now and they also on top get paid for being rich. This does not sound like a "better financial system" for me. Also, don't forget the DAO Fork[0] where with the "ungovernable Blockhain" it was decided a transaction w…
Yes. With proof-of-stake, the sources of truth are those few players who have amassed very large amounts of money.
The developers behind ethereum have effectively rediscovered what banks are.
Re: The Ethereum merge is done
#449Intuitively to me it seems that PoS can never work. With PoW the physical reality of scarce energy secures the chain - you can’t spend energy on one computation and another. With PoS we secure it by holding Ether, but what determines who holds Ether? The chain! But that’s what we are trying to secure. Is this turtles all the way down? Can anyone enlighten me?
Ether is also scarce. You can't spend one Ether multiple times for staking.
Is ether really scarce? There is no limit to the amount of ETH unlike bitcoin, so scarcity doesn't seem to be built in in the currency as with BTC.
Re: The Ethereum merge is done
#450Earlier quoted context omitted.
Have a look into DeFi and what A16Z is investing in is a good start. When many of the biggest SV firms are investing billions and you still don't understand it, don't you get curious and dig deeper?
We know why they're investing billions. Same reason they invest billions into start-ups - their capital gives them preferential terms that let them cash out at the expense of other investors, whether it be at IPO, or ICO.
I gave you a starting point, if you want to continue to dismiss a massive shift in society than that's on you.