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Ethereum just activated its ‘London’ hard fork

cnbc.com

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Re: Ethereum just activated its ‘London’ hard fork

#71

Post by dyndos »

pcthrowaway wrote: post #56
QTnqs6C5 wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why would people sell rather than fork to a version of the network where those ETH did not exist? One of the benefits of POS is that when you fork away from a malicious actor, they have to start over from the beginning while in POW, they can just point their hardware to your new chain unless you change the mining algorithm and screw over all the other miners.

This is exactly what happened with Ethereum in the early days when a bad actor was able to exploit a third-party contract to the tune of 5% of all ETH. The Ethereum everyone talks about today is the fork, due to the Ethereum Foundation which owns the trademark leading the fork. The Ethereum blockchain with the unaltered history is called Ethereum Classic https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethereum_Classic#The_DAO_bailo...

Note that the way this fork was pulled off was very ad-hoc.

Ethereum devs were unable to create a legitimate transaction reverting the DAO funds because they do not have access to the hackers' private key. The reversion was done with a "surgical state change" hardcoded into the client itself.

Re: Ethereum just activated its ‘London’ hard fork

#72

Post by pkulak »

DaftDank wrote: post #6

Can someone explain to me how PoS is not centralized? The whole point of crypto and the blockchain is decentralization, no? I feel like crypto/blockchain will end up looking nothing like how it was intended, and be regulated to the point that it's just the next iteration of the traditional banking system, where the current power holders continue holding the power. Maybe I was naive to ever think it would be any diffe…

Because anyone in the world can participate in validation. It may be costly to do so, or whatever other hoops, but there's no "central" authority managing participation.

Re: Ethereum just activated its ‘London’ hard fork

#73

Post by Ceezy »

DennisP wrote: post #12
DaftDank wrote: post #6

Can someone explain to me how PoS is not centralized? The whole point of crypto and the blockchain is decentralization, no? I feel like crypto/blockchain will end up looking nothing like how it was intended, and be regulated to the point that it's just the next iteration of the traditional banking system, where the current power holders continue holding the power. Maybe I was naive to ever think it would be any diffe…

Ethereum's PoS supports up to a million or so independent full-fledged stakers. That seems fairly decentralized to me.

But that's not peer to peer. And people compare bitcoin/ ethereum to gold, but you can't really exchange ethereum without a centralised authority when you use POS. If these people refuse to process your payment, there is not much you can do about it.

Re: Ethereum just activated its ‘London’ hard fork

#74

Post by sudosysgen »

cody8295 wrote: post #26
AlexandrB wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In practice PoW is pretty centralized also. Most of the mining is done by those who have the capital to set up massive ASIC/GPU farms.

There are coins like Monero that are ASIC-resistant and can only be mined with CPU, not GPU.

Incorrect. Monero can be mined using GPUs, and that is the dominant way it is mined.

Source : Mined Monero on an R9 290X until a few months ago.

Re: Ethereum just activated its ‘London’ hard fork

#75

Post by thegabez »

bugzz wrote: post #18
mmmeff wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What does it mean for Eth to be burned?

This change burns the "base fee" instead of giving it to miners, which means it goes to nobody and is gone forever

Whats the incentive for miners to continue to mine? They now just rely on tips? Won't they all just bail if they're not receiving enough tips to be profitable?

Re: Ethereum just activated its ‘London’ hard fork

#76

Post by xur17 »

lasagnaphil wrote: post #68
bugzz wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This change burns the "base fee" instead of giving it to miners, which means it goes to nobody and is gone forever

If it goes to nobody, is it really "gone forever"? Did it even exist in the first place? The confusions arise from thinking cryptocurrency tokens as material things (like gold). Money is just a numeric representation of the social relationship people have with each other, and the rules of the monetary system is just an technical agreement on how we should have relationships with others. This is a change of rules for…

> If it goes to nobody, is it really "gone forever"? Did it even exist in the first place?

Yes? Isn't "going to nobody" the very definition of "gone forever"? Previously miners received the ETH spent on fees, and either kept it, or traded it for cash. Since they will be receiving less, they will have less that they can sell, which should result in less selling pressure.

Re: Ethereum just activated its ‘London’ hard fork

#77

Post by TacticalCoder »

dogman144 wrote: post #24
DennisP wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ethereum's PoS supports up to a million or so independent full-fledged stakers. That seems fairly decentralized to me.

How many stakers actually have enough to win blocks though. What is the impact of shorting on PoS - what happens when I borrow enough ETH to win blocks, deliberately mis-verify TXs, and screw up consensus. I know Ethereum has planned recovery for situations like this, but PoS introduces risks that will never be as present in PoW bc the latter has built-in latency to how easy it is to aggregate resources which increas…

> ...what happens when I borrow enough ETH to win blocks, deliberately mis-verify TX...

Ethereum already "slashes" the staked ETHs of those who try to game the system (Ethereum already has one chain on PoS): the coins of stakes who try to cheat the system are not even confiscated, they're destroyed (making every other holder a little bit richer).

I don't know if this shall work or not, but that's their plan to keep bad actors from trying to attack the system.

Re: Ethereum just activated its ‘London’ hard fork

#78

Post by bugzz »

lasagnaphil wrote: post #68
bugzz wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This change burns the "base fee" instead of giving it to miners, which means it goes to nobody and is gone forever

If it goes to nobody, is it really "gone forever"? Did it even exist in the first place? The confusions arise from thinking cryptocurrency tokens as material things (like gold). Money is just a numeric representation of the social relationship people have with each other, and the rules of the monetary system is just an technical agreement on how we should have relationships with others. This is a change of rules for…

I'm not sure exactly what you are saying. I don't think there's any problem with the money being burned.

> nothing is "lost" or "burned"

That "specific" Eth is gone. I say "specific" because of course it's fungible, except for its transaction history.

Re: Ethereum just activated its ‘London’ hard fork

#79

Post by skybrian »

dyndos wrote: post #70
skybrian wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It seems like this argument proves too much for your purposes, in the sense that it can be used to show that neither algorithm is any good as far as distributed governance is concerned. While it’s true that you can’t buy Bitcoin (for example) unless someone else is selling, most people aren’t concerned about market liquidity for buyers due to whales being unwilling to sell. The permission to buy doesn’t seem hard to…

It's not about distributed governance; it's about abusing a dominant role in consensus. PoS is easier to capture, allowing the dominant party to censor and manipulate the settlement chain. As for governance, with Bitcoin everyone is equally powerless to dictate how things should go. If you appreciate the fixed ruleset, you can choose to participate. Ethereum is far more nebulous, being piloted by a foundation which h…

Okay, but in practice you’re going to trade on an exchange, which can… do whatever it wants?

Re: Ethereum just activated its ‘London’ hard fork

#80

Post by hanniabu »

fogof wrote: post #45
dogman144 wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How many stakers actually have enough to win blocks though. What is the impact of shorting on PoS - what happens when I borrow enough ETH to win blocks, deliberately mis-verify TXs, and screw up consensus. I know Ethereum has planned recovery for situations like this, but PoS introduces risks that will never be as present in PoW bc the latter has built-in latency to how easy it is to aggregate resources which increas…

> How many stakers actually have enough to win blocks though. Just as in PoW miners make blocks in proportion to their hashpower, PoS stakers win blocks in proportion to their stake > What is the impact of shorting on PoS - what happens when I borrow enough ETH to win blocks, deliberately mis-verify TXs, and screw up consensus. Well, you can't "mis-verify TXs", everyone can check your work to see that all of the tran…

> so you would need to borrow around 5 billion USD in order to make this attack work.

If you were about to find someone to sell you $5B in ETH at spot price. In reality you would need much more than this.

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