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Ethereum 2.0 launches

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Re: Ethereum 2.0 launches

#481

I am incredibly happy about this. It's the first step for a major cryptocurrency towards ledger security that does not damage the environment via mining. I always hated how wasteful and energy-inefficient mining is. Staking reduces energy costs by many, many orders of magnitude. With lightweight clients in development, it is possible to validate chain using Raspberry Pi. I hope (but don't expect) that some time in th…

> It's the first step for a major cryptocurrency towards ledger security that does not damage the environment via mining.

What about Ripple/XRP or Stellar? I mean, I'm not a fan of it but they've been doing a non-proof-of-work chain since 2012.

Re: Ethereum 2.0 launches

#482

I am incredibly happy about this. It's the first step for a major cryptocurrency towards ledger security that does not damage the environment via mining. I always hated how wasteful and energy-inefficient mining is. Staking reduces energy costs by many, many orders of magnitude. With lightweight clients in development, it is possible to validate chain using Raspberry Pi. I hope (but don't expect) that some time in th…

We can just use renewable energy sources long term. Really don't understand the obsession some people have with the energy requirements of bitcoin mining - please compare these with the energy requirements of the financial systems it replaces.

Bitcoin solves the need for third parties in the financial system. That's it, it's not meant to be some eco currency - never was.

Where's the validation that the current financial system needs to have its energy needs reduced? Bitcoin cuts out the energy requirements of all the countless third parties, for a start.

POS is a joke.

Re: Ethereum 2.0 launches

#483

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just use Metamask!

Thanks, what distinguishes it from the other 23?

Metamask is built by ConsenSys, the largest (and oldest?) company developing on Ethereum, and was founded by Joe Lubin (co-founder of Ethereum).

In my book that's not too far off from an "official" ethereum wallet.

https://consensys.net/about/

Re: Ethereum 2.0 launches

#484

Having worked with Ethereum, especially the low level bytecode, one of the changes I'm most excited for that I don't see mentioned a lot is the addition of eWASM support for nodes. There's many problems with the two dominant smart contract languages Solidity and Vyper, for instance bloated codegen that had to be patched otherwise complex contracts size could not be deployed[0], or more theoretical concerns such as so…

Looking close enough at Solidity was what turned me off the Ethereum ecosystem back in the day: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14810008

eWASM does look interesting, though!

Re: Ethereum 2.0 launches

#485
post #430

One question - why didn't Bitcoin drop to zero? I know, VHS survive and Betamax didn't, but unlike Betamax, Ethereum is pretty popular for everything, not just for low-class commodity speculation.

There still isn't a lot of real-world use of crypto. Even all the DeFi stuff on Ethereum, while innovative, is derivatives on speculative crypto assets. As long as speculation is the main thing going on in crypto, BTC is king, since it is purely speculative, has the best name recognition, and doesn't try to hide that fact.

This is a big deal to me. I'm watching keenly to see when the crypto market makes the turn out of niche market space and into the mainstream. Perhaps Eth2 is one of the starting blocks that is needed...

Re: Ethereum 2.0 launches

#486
post #371

Whenever someone mentions smart contracts I'm instantly reminded of that Jean Luc Picard quote: "I don't know how to communicate this, or even if it is possible to do so... but the question of justice has concerned me greatly of late. And so I say to any creature who may be listening: There can be no justice, so long as laws are absolute. Life itself is an exercise in exceptions."

That's one reason why any reasonable smart contract includes an unconstrained everybody-signs spend path.

At least for any contract in which "everybody" is reasonably defined, known upfront, and finite.

Re: Ethereum 2.0 launches

#487

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is to achieve consensus - the N nodes running the smart contract will ideally replace the central authorities that we implicitly trust. This enables trustless transactions, which gets rid of a lot of business red tape and unlocks productivity.

Only for a really weird technical definition of "trustless". You have to trust that the smart contract does what's intended, in the way you think it does so. So you need to either trust someone who knows the relevant programming language to audit it, or learn enough to audit it yourself. VS legal contracts, where you have to trust a lawyer to audit the contract but at least have the benefit of laws and bar associatio…

The way I understand smart contracts and them being trustless is that they are effectively an escrow.

So yes, each person participating has to do their own due diligence but once the smart contract is live, it is immutable and therefore trustless since it's just code.

Re: Ethereum 2.0 launches

#488

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I feel it makes little sense for the Ethereum Foundation to pour their own (human) resources into this. Well, they received $ 18.3 million in crowdfunding [1], so I would dare to say it's not only "their" resources but also the resources of the community which they're spending, isn't it? Given that the central thing a user needs to use a cryptocurrency is the wallet it would seem a bit weird to collect $ 18M from t…

I guess I shouldn't have put the "human" in parentheses. I did give an example of how the EF is spending their money on development of the ecosystem though, hoping that'd make it clear what I meant. I even chose a grant to a wallet as the example. I personally prefer the role of the EF as a facilitator more than monolithic employer. And they can (and do) do facilitate in more ways than just handing out grants. It's j…

(I have no clue how to reply when the depth is reached)

> Because as a user I am now sitting in front of 24 websites which look equally "meh" in terms of trustworthiness (fancy design and huge claims), each of them trying to get me to hand out money to their software (that's what a wallet is about!), and almost all of them seemingly being for-profit companies which avoid listing their address.

Yes, I guess that's definitely a disadvantage of the ecosystem growing so much. It's great that that happened, but it also means that the EF does not control everything anymore. They cannot advertise just one solution with so many out there, lest they rub someone the wrong way. But they also can't say nothing either. And then it just becomes very confusing with this information overload for beginners (though I think "list of 24 websites" is a bit of an exaggeration; it's not _that_ bad imo [0])

I don't think this is entirely new in the world of software though. Generally you then get to things like looking for advice on forums or word-of-mouth, and then there's a guy like me saying "if you're a beginner only wanting to make transactions on Ethereum, get a Ledger Nano X hardware wallet and use their Ledger Live application". And "if you then want to move on interacting with dApps, use Metamask and connect it to your Nano X".

> A single 1 well-known website of a non-profit would "work better" for me as a user in terms of trusting my choice to keep my money safe. (If I had any, not buying ETH in this situation :)

Well, you would definitely know cryptocurrency is a bit different than a website securing your funds. Someone needs to hold onto the private keys. If you're looking for something similar to a bank, then get something similar to a bank (Coinbase?). But this difference (custodial services, private keys, hardware wallet) definitely adds to the barrier one needs to overcome to get started. I would also argue that "1 well-known website" (or 1 major client implementation that then becomes the defacto standard) does not quite fit into the whole "decentralization" aspect of cryptocurrencies, but not everyone cares as much about that.

> Do you notice that you're actually arguing in favor of my point? :)

You could look at it that way I guess ;) Progress is a function of money, and the EF has more to attend to than just software/wallet development. They could certainly blow through all their ("our") money in a year building a super fancy wallet. Or, as has happened, spend a little to jump start the ecosystem, and then comes along not one but multiple better wallets _for free_! None of "your" money was spent on developing these. Seems like a good deal to me, as now "your" money can be spent jump starting other awesome things that no one is paying much attention to yet.

[0] https://ethereum.org/en/wallets/

Re: Ethereum 2.0 launches

#489

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s odd to accuse the Ethereum Foundation of not delivering and it would be hard to back that claim. Developing yet another Ethereum wallet when there are so many on the market would be a waste. It’s better for the foundation to provide a list of high quality wallets that already exist.

> It’s odd to accuse the Ethereum Foundation of not delivering and it would be hard to back that claim. It's actually quite easy: I opened the websites of all the 24 wallets they list and checked the imprint of each. None says it was developed by the foundation. > Developing yet another Ethereum wallet when there are so many on the market would be a waste. > It’s better for the foundation to provide a list of high qu…

A better analogy would be, it's a fully-functioning hospital but they don't provide their own shuttle service, you have to arrange transportation to the hospital yourself.

Re: Ethereum 2.0 launches

#490

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s odd to accuse the Ethereum Foundation of not delivering and it would be hard to back that claim. Developing yet another Ethereum wallet when there are so many on the market would be a waste. It’s better for the foundation to provide a list of high quality wallets that already exist.

> It’s odd to accuse the Ethereum Foundation of not delivering and it would be hard to back that claim. It's actually quite easy: I opened the websites of all the 24 wallets they list and checked the imprint of each. None says it was developed by the foundation. > Developing yet another Ethereum wallet when there are so many on the market would be a waste. > It’s better for the foundation to provide a list of high qu…

The Ethereum Foundation's purpose is to fund and coordinate the building of the protocol and infrastructure surrounding it. That does include funding of wallet developers which it has done in the past but it's better for the ecosystem and decentralization if there are lots of high quality wallets instead of one default wallet everyone uses.
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