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Mainnet Merge Announcement

blog.ethereum.org

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Re: Mainnet Merge Announcement

#531

Post by RjQoLCOSwiIKfpm »

X6S1x6Okd1st wrote: post #278
bluelightning2k wrote: post #143

I can be anti-crypto and still appreciate this. First - clearly reducing the environmental impact of anything by this much is pro-humanity. (Although having the impact to begin with is another story.) Secondly from a sheer technical coordination perspective there's a feeling of pulling off a complex dance. Makes it hard for any of us to claim our workloads aren't testable!

If you're interested in the technical coordination part of it you may be interested in the client diversity ideal that Ethereum has. Changes to Ethereuem don't happen by implementing the change on a client, but by updating a spec and then the ~5 execution clients or the ~5 consensus clients all update their code to become compliant. It's a really high cost to pay, but in theory (assuming that the mix that is run is a…

Is it true that the Ethereum foundation itself doesn't develop a fully usable set of clients anymore for the post-Merge network?

There seem to be only 3rd-party and seemingly commercial entities developing the "consensus" client which is needed to use the PoS network?

As a user it would be rather "meh" to not have an official client to rely on :|

See:

"Ask HN: Does the Ethereum foundation really not develop a post-Merge client?"

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32586172

TL;DR: To use the new Proof of Stake network, you'll need 2 pieces of software in parallel ("execution client" and "consensus client"). It seems only one of those is developed by the Ethereum foundation - implementations of the other one are only developed by various seemingly commercial entities.

Re: Mainnet Merge Announcement

#532

Post by ajaimk »

TheMaskedCoder wrote: post #463
aliljet wrote: post #3

I've been eagerly waiting for this to happen for a while. Here's picking up GPUs at fire sales for months and maybe years to come.

But would you _want_ a GPU that had a former life as a cryptominer? Running all those computations 24/7 probably takes a bit out of the life expectancy.

Actually yes. Gpu miners undervolt their cards these days and mining is a consistent load on the cards.

The mining cards experience less stress and wear compared to gaming.

Re: Mainnet Merge Announcement

#533

Post by SilverBirch »

drog wrote: post #200
spywaregorilla wrote: post #10

Is it incorrect to say that ethereum is now entirely centralized with some extra steps? Like, you have this proof of stake thing, but the only reason it works is because there's just a small number of validators, which is just going to be the ethereum foundation and friends. edit: putting this at the top because nobody is responding on topic. I am NOT talking about the class of people who stake 32 eth to validate nod…

There is no designated class of slashers. Slashing is part of the protocol and to slash somebody you have to prove it to the protocol that they broke rules of slashing. One of the rules is that you can't create two different blocks in the same slot (block number) i.e. you can't deliberately fork. There is a designated place in the block of the beacon chain where you can put signatures of the different blocks in the s…

You know this will be hacked right? 2 layers of jargon, billion dollars? It’ll be a “hack”

Re: Mainnet Merge Announcement

#534

Post by rglover »

marshray wrote: post #524
rglover wrote: post #477

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Testosterone rates are down over the last 50 years [1]. That correlates with the changes to food production to lower costs [2], [3]. Based on your "alex jones" jab, you clearly took my statement to refer to a "conspiracy," when really I attribute these changes to a combination of: 1. Financial incentives for corner-cutting which are bolstered by government policies increasing regulation (production, safety, employmen…

[1] Not impressed by this study of only Israeli men over 2006 to 2019. For every age range, the number of subjects went up during the study period. Overall, the study ended with about twice the number of subjects in the last period than the first. Look at Chart A. The error bars are noticeably smaller for later periods compared to the earlier periods. Something else is going on in this data that they are not accounti…

I knew this would be your response.

You met someone who doesn't capitulate to your manipulation, took the time to cite things, and you're predictably "not impressed" even going so far as to refute the source I gave with "something else is going on" (conspiratorial thinking) or the source being "right-wing navel-gazing" (when all of the sources are either published papers, politically neutral statistics, or mainstream media outlets).

I made a point to look at your HN profile and subsequently your Twitter and you're clearly ideologically overwhelmed.

Re: Mainnet Merge Announcement

#535

Post by SilverBirch »

kmeisthax wrote: post #254
drcode wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Totally wrong. Anybody has the ability to declare "the people with stakes did not validate correctly" In this context, what it means is that a person posted conflicting validation messages on different parts of the network, and anybody who can show the existence of two such conflicting messages can post it to the blockchain, receive a reward, and the offending validator gets slashed. (There are also other ways you ca…

I should point out that because Ethereum is a dark forest[0], slashers will collapse to a subset of stakers. More specifically, anyone who is not a staker is at the mercy of the mempool[1] to broadcast their slashing transaction and at the mercy of other stakers to correctly record it. There is no economic incentive to do so, and no way to constrain the software such that stakers cannot manipulate the slashing messag…

I feel like I’m going insane you’re literally just quoting Scifi bull shit. This is money we’re talking about.

Re: Mainnet Merge Announcement

#536

Post by sebzim4500 »

newsclues wrote: post #476
falcolas wrote: post #288

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> No longer do you need massive amounts of electricity and insider access to gpu or asic manufacturers. No, you just need money, 32 eth is only around $50000. And there's a lot of people with sufficient money to stand up multiple validators. And validators can also initiate/vote on arbitrary slash requests (which costs them nothing, as I read it).

As a not well off person with a gaming computer with power included in my rent, I don’t have 50,000$. Shrinking the number of people with the financial means to contribute doesn’t seem like it’s going to result in decentralization.

Right but you can't afford to buy ASICs either so from your point of view the situation hasn't really changed. The chance of you ever being able to mine an ETH block with your gaming PC is negligable.

Re: Mainnet Merge Announcement

#537

Post by sebzim4500 »

anderspitman wrote: post #305
spywaregorilla wrote: post #10

Is it incorrect to say that ethereum is now entirely centralized with some extra steps? Like, you have this proof of stake thing, but the only reason it works is because there's just a small number of validators, which is just going to be the ethereum foundation and friends. edit: putting this at the top because nobody is responding on topic. I am NOT talking about the class of people who stake 32 eth to validate nod…

As an outside observer, my biggest takeaway from the threads here is that apparently the Ethereum devs have managed to create a technology so complicated that proponents can't concisely explain why it works and detractors can't explain why it doesn't.

Aren't there loads of things where you can't concisely explain how it works? Fundamentally this is a hard problem, we shouldn't be too surprised if the solution does not fit in a hackernews comment. (Especially when so many people on this site seem desperate to misunderstand anything related to cryptocurrencies).

Re: Mainnet Merge Announcement

#538

Post by DennisP »

koheripbal wrote: post #513
drog wrote: post #461

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I know about that but thanks for your comment - I’ll clarify what I mean. It’s just the specifics of how this works - slashing is part of the protocol in the sense that I described: when you are chosen to create a new block and you have proof that someone violated the rules then you include this proof in your proposed block and update balance. Any validator can do it including the smallest of home stakers. More detai…

Slashing is only detrimental to the bad actor if the fork fails. If the fork succeeds, then there is no penalty for a malicious fork. This is why they are limiting the number of validators.

On either fork, anyone can submit proof of your equivocation and get you slashed.

There are currently over 400,000 full-fledged validators. The maximum supported number of validators is the number of ETH divided by 32, or about 3.75 million. Scaling is the reason the limit wasn't made even higher, by lowering the ETH per validator.

Re: Mainnet Merge Announcement

#539

Post by Gazoche »

sph wrote: post #528
MuffinFlavored wrote: post #191

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> First - clearly reducing the environmental impact of anything by this much is pro-humanity. How long until BTC follows suit?

Never, and that's a feature. The energy consumption has always been a red herring. Everything consumes energy. Humanity's goal is to optimise energy generation and make it as green as possible, not reduce total energy usage to zero. That's just an idiotic proposition. The problem has never been "Bitcoin draws too much power", the problem is "we need more energy generation, and cheaper, and possibly not from fossil fu…

So your argument is "it doesn't matter that Bitcoin wastes energy because we'll all eventually transition to green"? Don't you think the extra consumption makes that transition harder?

Re: Mainnet Merge Announcement

#540

Post by marshray »

rglover wrote: post #534
marshray wrote: post #524

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[1] Not impressed by this study of only Israeli men over 2006 to 2019. For every age range, the number of subjects went up during the study period. Overall, the study ended with about twice the number of subjects in the last period than the first. Look at Chart A. The error bars are noticeably smaller for later periods compared to the earlier periods. Something else is going on in this data that they are not accounti…

I knew this would be your response. You met someone who doesn't capitulate to your manipulation, took the time to cite things, and you're predictably "not impressed" even going so far as to refute the source I gave with "something else is going on" (conspiratorial thinking) or the source being "right-wing navel-gazing" (when all of the sources are either published papers, politically neutral statistics, or mainstream…

It's a bad study and I'd be willing to tell the researchers that to their face.

"Something else is going on" is not "conspiratorial thinking" when it comes to analyzing data. Systematic biases in data is the normal and expected state of affairs.

> or the source being "right-wing navel-gazing" (when all of the sources are either published papers, politically neutral statistics, or mainstream media outlets).

I didn't say your sources were "RWNG", I said the "other stuff you wrote" was.

The sources could all be good, and still not actually support your conclusions.

> I made a point to look at your HN profile and subsequently your Twitter > and you're clearly ideologically overwhelmed.

I've been having good discussions on Twitter Spaces lately. Feel free to connect over there if you'd like to discuss this further.

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