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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

#51
post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A high price of ETH as an asset creates a higher security level for Ethereum the blockchain. The ecosystem of projects, apps, protocols, organizations, etc on Ethereum is healthier when the blockchain is guaranteed secure and stable for everyone to use. It's a benefit to everyone.

Except people who want to use ETH as a currency, rather than an asset. If we're going to have inflation or deflation, pick inflation; that way, you can actually spend the stuff without FOMO.

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

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

#52
Satoshi said "The nature of Bitcoin is such that once version 0.1 was released, the core design was set in stone for the rest of its lifetime."[1]

Vitalik going from POW to POS is nonsense for any crypto electronic cash currency because people can not trust it if core design changes from time to time. Vitalik will probably come back again to POW after miners calm down.

[1] https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=195.msg1611#msg1611

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

#53

Regardless of the current issues with the updates, gas prices, different opinions on the community, devs vs miners vs users... Am I the only one who thinks people underestimate Ethereum and its EVM invention? In 2013 this guy (who I think is a visionary) wrote a document with a proposal that led to the creation of a world-wide turing-complete distributed computer. And still, people are just starting to realize its po…

I don't think it was visionary. Ever since, blockchain has struggled to find a real-world use case. We know how blockchain works, the concept is thousands of years old. This problem existed in the past (coordinating in an environment where no one trusts anyone). However if this was a real problem in the real world, companies would have built blockchains long ago.

This is rather survivor bias. Apparently blockchain found some straws to hold on to. It could have been one of those millions go-nowhere projects just as likely.

I think there are legit use cases for it, but ultimately, we are still far from mass adoption and without the crazy monetary gains, I don't even believe anyone would talk about blockchain these days. Technology wise, it's not a strong value proposition. We can do pretty much everything without blockchain. Yeah there are some cases where trustlessness helps, but once this problem would become serious enough, it's not hard to build blockchain technology. It basically follows directly from basic principles defined by the problem. And the fact that everyone "thinks blockchain is new", already proves that the problem actually doesn't really exist.

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

#54

This could get really ugly. (Not only per se, but, also, as it really shows how "centralized" these suposedly decentralized systems are ... ... and -this- could have consequences.)

They are decentralized. This move is more of a risk mitigation strategy than risk of a 51% attack. There's also certain risks from miners at the transition block because they know the exact block it will happen at.

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

#55

Satoshi said "The nature of Bitcoin is such that once version 0.1 was released, the core design was set in stone for the rest of its lifetime."[1] Vitalik going from POW to POS is nonsense for any crypto electronic cash currency because people can not trust it if core design changes from time to time. Vitalik will probably come back again to POW after miners calm down. [1] https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=195.…

> Vitalik going from POW to POS is nonsense

Being able to change for the better is not nonsense, it's vital to the survival and stability of a coin. The #1 complaint about Bitcoin (especially on HN) is its excessive use of power. Moving to POS solves this problem. Moving to POS allows ETH to scale transaction processing where BTC cannot.

Miners are obviously angry because they spent millions (probably billions) on GPUs in warehouses to mine ETH, and this is threatening their profits. They're not the significant party when it comes to talking about ETH though. The users and larger ecosystem make up the significant parties.

POS will happen. ETH 2.0 will happen. This is why ETH is better than BTC -- it has a leader like Vitalik who is open to changes and knows how to lead implementation. If miners want to throw a tantrum in the process, so be it. We'll just leave them behind.

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

#56
post #33

> There are a wide variety of benefits to this proposal, such as potentially making Ethereum deflationary Interesting that this is framed as a benefit.

A high price of ETH as an asset creates a higher security level for Ethereum the blockchain. The ecosystem of projects, apps, protocols, organizations, etc on Ethereum is healthier when the blockchain is guaranteed secure and stable for everyone to use. It's a benefit to everyone.

If one wants higher security, one shouldn't be pissing off the miners who provide that security.

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

#57

This could get really ugly. (Not only per se, but, also, as it really shows how "centralized" these suposedly decentralized systems are ... ... and -this- could have consequences.)

it's centralized in both directions. Small development team and small group of powerful miners.

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

#58
post #2

As someone who uses both BTC and ETH and who likes both, this is one of the reason why people prefer Bitcoin over Ethereum. The reality is that the energy used to secure the Bitcoin blockchain (or the energy "wasted" according to many here) is important and makes a 51% attack prohibitively costly. While Vitalik coming with this potential solution is great, the reverse of that coin is that the developers have very sig…

is this also an issue with Ethereum competitors like Cardano?

Cardano is a whole slew of different issues lol

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

#59
post #2

As someone who uses both BTC and ETH and who likes both, this is one of the reason why people prefer Bitcoin over Ethereum. The reality is that the energy used to secure the Bitcoin blockchain (or the energy "wasted" according to many here) is important and makes a 51% attack prohibitively costly. While Vitalik coming with this potential solution is great, the reverse of that coin is that the developers have very sig…

> that the developers have very significant control on the blockchain

The case for BTC in this regard is no different from ETH. In both cases developers put together an upgrade, then miners can either upgrade or not.

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

#60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Satoshi already envisioned smart contracts that's why he created and designed Bitcoin Script Language "The design supports a tremendous variety of possible transaction types that I designed years ago. Escrow transactions, bonded contracts, third party arbitration, multi-party signature, etc."[1] [1] https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=195.msg1611#msg1611

One limitation of Bitcoin script is that it's not turing complete. But there are sidechains like rsk with defi apps like sovryn that bring smart contracts and defi to BTC.

I'm not an expert in Computer Theory but other people proved Bitcoin and Bitcoin Script are Turing Complete:

[1] https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3160279

[2] https://coingeek.com/bitcoin-script-is-turing-complete-scryp...

[3] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M6j-11H2O7c

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