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Make Ethereum Cypherpunk Again

vitalik.eth.limo

61–70 of 70 posts

Re: Make Ethereum Cypherpunk Again

#61

Aaah, the ethereum + swarm + whisper infographic, oh I have missed you so. This criticism he levies at web3 here is the core reason I stopped believing in the vision. I was a big fan of it when ethereum launched mainnet. Mist browser, a reference interface for a truly decentralized internet. The vision: decentralized message transport, file storage and consensus/finality/incentivization for applications that need it.…

I feel the same. I used to be pretty into the concept and values of Ethereum, until I realized the values of those actually building the network weren't what I thought they were, and thus weren't aligned with mine.

Funny you mention said lock, because the pivot and associated fallout there was what really revealed (to me) that the creators of Ethereum cared more about the "currency" aspect than the "crypto" aspect.

From that point on, you could see this reflected in every decision made about the development and direction of Ethereum and the associated ecosystem. There were numerous core protocol decisions that ultimately came down to "better for future users of the network or better for current users of the network", and the latter won out every time, especially when economics were involved--and they're always involved with a cryptocurrency.

Number go up, and whatnot.

Re: Make Ethereum Cypherpunk Again

#62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The high transaction fees are intentional and a symptom of a sick system which allows people to profit from inefficiency. The higher the transaction fees, the more validators earn. There is no incentive to build tech which will lower transaction fees, even though it would enable practical use cases. Ethereum community is not interested in value creation because they know that value creation doesn't pay. They can earn…

> Having worked in the industry, I've witnessed how they literally suppress innovations which would result in more scalability and lower fees False until proven with sources. I'm involved with ethstaker and follow core development closely and have never seen anything like this.

You'd gave to look outside of Ethereum to see the projects being suppressed and cancelled. Ethereum cannot scale due to its complexity with smart contracts and so crypto developers are being pulled towards it to prevent them from working on other projects with more scalable architectures.

Re: Make Ethereum Cypherpunk Again

#63
post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The high transaction fees are intentional and a symptom of a sick system which allows people to profit from inefficiency. The higher the transaction fees, the more validators earn. There is no incentive to build tech which will lower transaction fees, even though it would enable practical use cases. Ethereum community is not interested in value creation because they know that value creation doesn't pay. They can earn…

> The higher the transaction fees, the more validators earn. Not really. 95% of the gas fees get burned and do not go to the validators at all. Only the 'tip' or 'priority fee' goes to the validators and even that is barely anything. Most of the transaction related income validators get is from MEV - basically bribes to order transactions in the block in a particular manner allowing arbitrageurs to extract additional…

Any Proof of Stake system, by its design will reward validators in accordance to supply and demand for compute. Transaction and compute fees underpin the entire security of PoS. The fees necessarily grow proportionally to demand for compute, because, in a fully replicated architecture such as Ethereum, supply of compute is limited by the slowest allowable node in the network.

Since supply of compute is inelastic, it means that demand for compute fully determines fees + MEV. Any effort to scale the network would result in supply elasticity and would therefore cause fees + MEV to drop which would go against the interests of those who provide the validation service and earn the fees + MEV.

Re: Make Ethereum Cypherpunk Again

#64

> Having lived through that era, the number one culprit that I would blame as the root cause of this shift is the rise in transaction fees. Haha no, the number one culprit is that 99% of blockchain projects are either scams, bullshit, not actually decentralized, or simply fail despite pulling in vast amounts of funding (sometimes more than one of the above!). However, I do agree that most--if not all--problems in the…

I don't see any possible usecase for crypto if a 100-200$ gas fee during high demand is considered acceptable. You can make anything in the world but if you have transaction fees that high every single time that project will be guaranteed to fail.

Arbitrage and speculation seem to be the usecases that survive (and thrive) under such conditions.

I find those to be worthless usecases to society in general, but they are usecases.

Re: Make Ethereum Cypherpunk Again

#65
It is peculiar that there are strong discussion around crypto and Coinbase was in S12 batch [1] and one of the top by revenue. Paul Graham continues to praise and recognize how prescient Brian Armstrong was [2]. To be objective there were other companies in the space before Coinbase that are still alive [3].

[1] https://www.ycombinator.com/topcompanies/revenue

[2] https://twitter.com/paulg/status/1740936771192623175

[3] https://www.coinfabrik.com/blog/oldest-blockchain-companies/

Re: Make Ethereum Cypherpunk Again

#66
post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's so telling when you continue to use the slur "bcash" and accuse others of being dishonest. And focusing so much on a subreddit that's not tied to the project no more than r/bitcoin is to Bitcoin, while dismissing it's existential reason as "irrelevant", is tiring.

Bcash is not a slur. It is literally what the project is called by everybody except the bcash people trying to trick people into think it is related to bitcoin.

It's not by any reputable exchange.

Only counting "everybody" as people on your side is common in cults, but is rarely indicative of the real world.

Re: Make Ethereum Cypherpunk Again

#67
post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Soon after Blockstream's Greg Maxwell and Adam Back hijacked the Bitcoin Core GitHub repo they locked down the block size to 1mb, something Satoshi and the original devs never imagined anyone being dumb enough to do let alone intended. Doesn't this point to Bitcoin's decentralized nature being largely smoke and mirrors? You're claiming that just two individuals have had a significant negative impact on a project th…

Yes and no. They didn't just control the repo, but they somehow managed to convince the miners to support them. Exchanges and users simply defaulted to "the longest chain is Bitcoin", ensuring their victory. So they weren't alone. But Bitcoin's truly decentralized nature allows for forks, where if you disagree with the development direction you can always go your own way. So the spirit of Bitcoin lives on in other pr…

The miners didn't support them at all. The majority supported the hard fork, and initiatives like Gavin Andresen's BitcoinXT to implement it. But the main Bitcoin forum on Reddit started censoring any advocacy for a block size limit increase, which made a clean hard fork impossible.

Re: Make Ethereum Cypherpunk Again

#68
post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes and no. They didn't just control the repo, but they somehow managed to convince the miners to support them. Exchanges and users simply defaulted to "the longest chain is Bitcoin", ensuring their victory. So they weren't alone. But Bitcoin's truly decentralized nature allows for forks, where if you disagree with the development direction you can always go your own way. So the spirit of Bitcoin lives on in other pr…

The miners didn't support them at all. The majority supported the hard fork, and initiatives like Gavin Andresen's BitcoinXT to implement it. But the main Bitcoin forum on Reddit started censoring any advocacy for a block size limit increase, which made a clean hard fork impossible.

Initially you're right.

At the crucial point they did however convince the miners to support a Segwit + blocksize increase, which pulled away the support.

Of course, it's obvious that it was just a bait-and-switch and the blocksize increase is nowhere to be seen, and will probably never happen.

Re: Make Ethereum Cypherpunk Again

#69
post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The miners didn't support them at all. The majority supported the hard fork, and initiatives like Gavin Andresen's BitcoinXT to implement it. But the main Bitcoin forum on Reddit started censoring any advocacy for a block size limit increase, which made a clean hard fork impossible.

Initially you're right. At the crucial point they did however convince the miners to support a Segwit + blocksize increase, which pulled away the support. Of course, it's obvious that it was just a bait-and-switch and the blocksize increase is nowhere to be seen, and will probably never happen.

They were able to execute the SegWit2x bait and switch, and shenanigans before it, only after the forums had already been censored and they could promote UASF as a threat against the miners.

Ultimately, miners would only support a hard fork if a super majority went along with it and with the major forums being censored that was going to be impossible.

Without the censorship there would have been a super majority supporting the hard work given the sentiment on the forums at that time.

Re: Make Ethereum Cypherpunk Again

#70
post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Tether just printed another billion dollars worth of Tether. Wait til you learn how much USD is printed.

USD is backed by the value and legitimacy of the world's largest economy and world's largest military. I don't think Tether has that kind of track record...

Not sure you understand how inflation works.
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