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The Problem with Ethereum

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Re: The Problem with Ethereum

#81

Post by casi »

FeepingCreature wrote: post #5

Is there any network where the inflationary half-life of the currency is something like a week? I've been looking for something like that since I heard that Bitcoin was deflationary. (I was excited about Eth until I learnt its currency had persistent value...)

CirclesUBI and proof of humanity UBI

Both basic income projects. Proof of humanity ubi tokens are more easily tradeable and meant to provide Sybil resistance to eth projects, but circles has a nice self contained design which is probably more interesting as a form of basic income/ community currency.

Re: The Problem with Ethereum

#82

Post by FeepingCreature »

secondaryacct wrote: post #59
FeepingCreature wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, I would like to mine it. Imagine: a network where the only gains you get are from spending your money quickly. The anti-hodl. It would be completely worthless as a store of value or investment vehicle. Its only conceivable use would be as a fast and efficient transaction ledger. Which is what I wanted out of blockchain to begin with! I'd be happy to support a network like that, even if my income was rapidly vanis…

I work for fiat and this happens already ! You dont need crypto to have a working economy based on consumption and trade. In fact, crypto is perceived it seems to be an absolute value stashing system where you collect your reward and store it for free until you want others to produce effort for you. But I refuse to produce effort for a guy who spent his energy 50 years ago and just throw at me a few gold coins to do…

> I work for fiat and this happens already ! You dont need crypto to have a working economy based on consumption and trade.

Yes but apparently you need crypto to have censorship-proof cheap transactions that finish quickly.

In theory, you can do that on a fiat currency. In practice, my transactions take days.

Re: The Problem with Ethereum

#83

Post by ButtSpark69 »

chrisco255 wrote: post #43
h0l0cube wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's a little more to the argument: > This time the working class has their pay reduced from 4 Eth to 3 Eth per block, a 25% pay cut. Miners now earn 40% less per block than at the time of the community’s constitution, which promised that code was law, and which the ruling class later said they would break only once, for what was an especially good reason. But the code is law promise has now been broken so many ti…

Miners for Ethereum are incredibly profitable and benefit enormously from side-channel MEV (miner extractable value) payouts that tip them for transaction ordering. In doing so, they extract value from users making trades. In addition, a reduced issuance in crypto tends to lead to the underlying asset appreciating in value, as noted by the Bitcoin stock-to-flow model in the wake of each halvening. The "code is law" i…

Also, Ethereum Classic has been 51% attacked and then reversed transactions a few times. So not sure if author is recommending ppl avoid altcoins entirely?

Re: The Problem with Ethereum

#84

Post by FeepingCreature »

dash2 wrote: post #30
FeepingCreature wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, I would like to mine it. Imagine: a network where the only gains you get are from spending your money quickly. The anti-hodl. It would be completely worthless as a store of value or investment vehicle. Its only conceivable use would be as a fast and efficient transaction ledger. Which is what I wanted out of blockchain to begin with! I'd be happy to support a network like that, even if my income was rapidly vanis…

Right... and who will be buying and using this money?

People who need fast, cheap, safe transactions rather than a value store.

Re: The Problem with Ethereum

#85

Post by tedsanders »

BLKNSLVR wrote: post #69
a-dub wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

it's funny that this appeared today. i've recently been musing about whether or not a technical and political migration of the bitcoin ecosystem from proof of work to a consensus model that simulates the proof of work economy in a clean way, complete with a socio-economic solution that does not leave miners and their associated/secondary economy out in the cold, could be an idealized model for migrating the global ec…

There are a number of articles claiming various percentages of Bitcoin mining from renewables, but this is probably the most balanced quote: "Commonly cited estimates range from 39% to 73% renewable energy. Jesse Morris, CEO of non-profit Energy Web says most estimates find 20% to 50% of bitcoin is powered by renewable energy, but all available numbers are based on self-reported data, which is unverifiable. 30 June 2…

Does anyone know of any sources that attempt to look at the marginal energy source rather than the average energy source?

For example, a region might have 50% of its power from hydro and 50% from gas, but 0% of new power plants are hydro and 100% are gas. In such a world, adding a new electricity consumer to the grid causes 100% gas emissions, even though "50% of power is clean hydro." The proper attribution really ought to be the causal attribution, which typically means looking at the marginal source of power rather than the average.

I know this is a complicated topic. Entire PhD theses have been written on modeling the emissions impact of EVs, and there's a healthy debate of how to best calculate the 'causal' impact.

Re: The Problem with Ethereum

#86

Post by AgentME »

h0l0cube wrote: post #31
DenseComet wrote: post #6

Seems like one of the core arguments of this is that the the core devs have pushed the difficulty bomb multiple times because they've missed their original timelines for switching to PoS without any repercussions. It seems to me that this is actually the correct thing to do. I'd rather the core devs take their time and iron out the issues instead of being incentivized to play fast and loose with a system that manages…

There's a little more to the argument: > This time the working class has their pay reduced from 4 Eth to 3 Eth per block, a 25% pay cut. Miners now earn 40% less per block than at the time of the community’s constitution, which promised that code was law, and which the ruling class later said they would break only once, for what was an especially good reason. But the code is law promise has now been broken so many ti…

The way that's written like Ethereum owes the miners a job strange. Ethereum isn't a work program for miners to manage mining hardware. Ethereum functions on proof-of-work and needs some people to sell their compute time and electricity. Miners aren't doing a generous service that would be useful outside of Ethereum that should be encouraged any further than Ethereum's specific needs.

With PoS, the pay for miners is planned to be cut from 3 eth all the way down to 0, and that's great that Ethereum will become more efficient in that it no longer needs so much compute time spent on it. Ethereum will switch to needing stakers to provide a service to it that they're paid for, but if people designing Ethereum knew a way to not require that while still staying decentralized, then that would also be a great upgrade.

Re: The Problem with Ethereum

#87

Post by kristofferR »

spottybanana wrote: post #76
kristofferR wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

(b) is why Bitcoin core development has stagnated[*]. And that's fine if people just want it to be like gold, however Ethereum doesn't aspire to not evolve. (c) I actually disagree with. Decentralized governance is a very interesting subject, and some cryptos like Tezos are governed quite decentralized in many ways. Right now I'm really confident in how Ethereum is governed, with the "old-fashioned" open-source devel…

> (b) is why Bitcoin core development has stagnated. And that's fine if people just want it to be like gold, however Ethereum doesn't aspire to not evolve. How stagnated is Bitcoin development? Yeah it is not progressing super fast, but I think it is still progressing. Taproot has been accepted by miners and will be activated this year. Improvements are being done. As Bitcoin is the biggest crypto by market gap, I th…

True, Taproot is looking promising. Yet, it's the only major change since 2017, I don't think they're moving fast enough.

And what's the next major improvement on the cards for Bitcoin after Taproot? I haven't heard much, and that is worrying in and of itself IMO.

Re: The Problem with Ethereum

#88

Post by animex »

I think if anything the crypto-experiment has revealed is that an uncaring, cold machine doesn't meet the needs of the human condition. A person fat-fingers his life savings to null, a thief socially engineers someone's money, a bug causes assets to be trapped, etc. It's clear we need a better system that can service our imperfections.

Re: The Problem with Ethereum

#89

Post by lxgr »

seibelj wrote: post #25

The great part about cryptocurrency is that if you don’t want it, don’t buy it - don’t read about it - don’t do anything. It is a purely voluntary system. If you want to avoid US Dollars, it’s essentially impossible for most people. There is no problem with Ethereum.

Except if you want to buy a GPU today.

Re: The Problem with Ethereum

#90

Post by kristofferR »

tofukid wrote: post #71
kristofferR wrote: post #24

> As a Bitcoiner I find these actions intolerable and unacceptable. I know none of them would ever be accepted in Bitcoin. This sums up the whole piece in my view. Bitcoin development stagnated years ago exactly because nobody involved wanted to change/hard fork it to implement improvements. For people who want a Bitcoin-like Ethereum with no DAO fork or staking there's Ethereum Classic.

https://github.com/bitcoin/bitcoin/commits/master I wouldn’t consider that stagnate.

Sure, it's just moving very slowly after the block size civil war. I remember the early years when the talk was about interesting developments instead of just the value.
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