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The Ethereum merge is done

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Re: The Ethereum merge is done

#921

Post by Eisenstein »

StanislavPetrov wrote: post #918
ineedasername wrote: post #444

Prior to the merge ethereum’s trust was controlled by the organizations with the most money who bought/built massive data centers to mine it. With the merge & staking that abstraction layer has disappeared and it’s still the organizations with the most money who control it. Sure it’s great that non-productive math problems no longer need to be solved & consume so much energy and hardware to make it all work. And it m…

>If a criminal spies on my credit card # as I make a purchase and uses that to go on a spending spree I can fix it with the credit card company with little cost but a few hours of time and frustration. However, if a much more powerful criminal spies on your credit card # as you send money to Wikileaks or a bunch of truckers who drive to Ottowa for a protest you can never fix it when your card is cancelled and your ba…

That argument could be made for anything if you are the one targeted. I mean, prison is authoritarian an oppressive. There are innocent people in them. Do we make it so that it is not possible to track crimes and put people in prison?

It is all about motives. If you think that the government is doing something wrong, change that, don't make it impossible for anyone to enforce laws at all.

Re: The Ethereum merge is done

#922

Post by lmm »

psychlops wrote: post #898
bcrosby95 wrote: post #684

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If a criminal spies on my credit card # as I make a purchase and uses that to go on a spending spree I can fix it with the credit card company with little cost but a few hours of time and frustration. I'll take this one step further. My credit card company has caught every instance of fraud on my card. So I've had zero hours of frustration yet multiple instances of people trying to use my credit card number. One ti…

So because your losses are comfortably socialized, it's a good system?

Better than a system that can't manage that much.

Re: The Ethereum merge is done

#923

Post by lmm »

idiotsecant wrote: post #866
seydor wrote: post #512

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How i see it, when a group of powerful people wanted to control ETH to some direction or block a party, they needed to do some physical work , which acted as a time-delay lock. Now all they need to do is think about it. I m not sure why the second case has the same level of trust as the first. I think this begins the search for another trustless transaction system that is neither PoW nor PoS.

>they needed to do some physical work Why can't these hypothetical powerful people rent time on a mining farm? PoW is PoS, it just has some extra steps that have the minor side effect of using huge amount of resources for no reason.

> Why can't these hypothetical powerful people rent time on a mining farm?

They can, but so can the rest of us. Unlike under PoS.

Re: The Ethereum merge is done

#924

Post by lmm »

miohtama wrote: post #848
Salgat wrote: post #670

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That defeats the point. People keep forgetting that the single innovative aspect of cryptocurrencies was the invention of a way to do completely anonymous and trustless transactions. That's it. The second you wrap that in a layer that eliminates that, you're better off just skipping the blockchain altogether since it's an otherwise extremely awful performing persistence.

Here is another thread from HackerNews today: ”Stripe nuked my business” https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32854528 Visa/MasterCard is never going to be a solution for everyone, everywhere, even if it is a solution for a particular Orignal Poster.

It will be a solution for everyone running a legal business (i.e. one that doesn't impose significant negative externalities on others). Making life harder for criminals is a feature not a bug.

Re: The Ethereum merge is done

#925

Post by max47 »

idiotsecant wrote: post #866
seydor wrote: post #512

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How i see it, when a group of powerful people wanted to control ETH to some direction or block a party, they needed to do some physical work , which acted as a time-delay lock. Now all they need to do is think about it. I m not sure why the second case has the same level of trust as the first. I think this begins the search for another trustless transaction system that is neither PoW nor PoS.

>they needed to do some physical work Why can't these hypothetical powerful people rent time on a mining farm? PoW is PoS, it just has some extra steps that have the minor side effect of using huge amount of resources for no reason.

With pow, the cash you burn on that mining farm is gone after you give up on your vote or your attack. With PoS, the simple act of being rich means you get more vote, you don't need to burn it or spend it. You even get richer while you do it

Re: The Ethereum merge is done

#926

Post by mrb »

ninkendo wrote: post #891
mrb wrote: post #764

Earlier quoted context omitted.

« Shouldn't that be observable somehow? » No, because of two reasons. First, many miners simply pointed their hardware to mine other cryptocurrencies such as ETHW or ETC. For example we have evidence that about a quarter of Ethereum's mining farms moved to ETC over the last 24h. Second, contrary to sensationalist headlines Ethereum miners only represent a drop in the bucket of the global electricity consumption: only…

> Ethereum miners only represent a drop in the bucket of the global electricity consumption: only 0.1% 1 out of every 1000 watts of energy produced in the whole world going to ethereum mining is tragic. It’s an absolutely massive waste, and the fact that crypto miners think a number like that isn’t a big deal is horrifying to me.

You care about 1 in 1000 ? Did you know that 660 out of 1000 watts of primary energy used to create electricity are wasted by the time the electricity arrives at the customer meter? (source: https://www.enerdynamics.com/Energy-Currents_Blog/How-Much-P... )

Logically, you should be 660 times more "horrified" by this waste than by cryto mining, and yet you are not. In fact most likely until today you were not even aware of such waste. This is what bothers me the most about these discussions. People have priorities in the wrong places. You want to show you care about waste? Then start caring about the most important problems instead of being laser-focusing on 0.1%.

Re: The Ethereum merge is done

#927

Post by Widdershin »

brianobush wrote: post #915
Waterluvian wrote: post #451

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not using up a goat load of electricity is like 99% of why this change is great. Let people speculate on their funny money without harming everyone. A lateral move on the other details is rather unsurprising.

Agreed. Next I want gamers to quit wasting energy too. They should just read books and do something useful with their time.

I hope you’re not reading any paper books - the environmental impact of paperbacks is phenomenal when compared to eReaders.

And of course, you would never waste energy by purchasing a hardcover, that would be morally reprehensible.

Honestly wouldn’t surprise me if a kid playing minecraft on an old computer had drastically less impact on the environment than your average book snob - especially the “I buy paper for the experience” kind.

Re: The Ethereum merge is done

#928

Post by cphoover »

xtracto wrote: post #832
Slartie wrote: post #458

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Especially since the carbon emissions of Ethereum were a product of Ethereum's existence in the first place, hence an entirely self-made problem, produced by the very people developing and pushing the platform. It's a lot like someone being an active part of a group of gangsters taking hostages, then turning around and helping the police freeing them, only to then brag about how proud he/she is of having a role in fr…

I love Ethereum and am a strong believer in Blockchain technology, but everytime I hear the "Ethereum PoS is a win for the environment" reminds me of the Simpons episode when Bart says something like: "I'm going to smoke and then quit smoking" to what Homer replies congratulating him because quitting smoking is one of the most difficult things to do... It is very misleading, and naive.

Lol hillarious

Re: The Ethereum merge is done

#929

Post by StanislavPetrov »

Eisenstein wrote: post #921
StanislavPetrov wrote: post #918

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>If a criminal spies on my credit card # as I make a purchase and uses that to go on a spending spree I can fix it with the credit card company with little cost but a few hours of time and frustration. However, if a much more powerful criminal spies on your credit card # as you send money to Wikileaks or a bunch of truckers who drive to Ottowa for a protest you can never fix it when your card is cancelled and your ba…

That argument could be made for anything if you are the one targeted. I mean, prison is authoritarian an oppressive. There are innocent people in them. Do we make it so that it is not possible to track crimes and put people in prison? It is all about motives. If you think that the government is doing something wrong, change that, don't make it impossible for anyone to enforce laws at all.

>It is all about motives.

I disagree completely. Motive is completely irrelevant. Mass surveillance and government spying (among other things) on people who have done nothing to suggest they are engaged in criminal activity is absolutely wrong and a violation of human rights and human dignity no matter what the motive.

>If you think that the government is doing something wrong, change that, don't make it impossible for anyone to enforce laws at all.

The issue is that people with morality and dignity believe that the government is doing something wrong by violating the privacy and human dignity of every citizen (by spying on their communications and tapping their phones), while those who don't see the value of privacy or human dignity don't believe the government is doing anything wrong. That is the crux of the issue. Trying to explain the importance of privacy and human dignity who people who don't believe that privacy and human dignity have any value is like trying to explain what blue looks like to someone who has been blind since birth.

>I mean, prison is authoritarian an oppressive. There are innocent people in them. Do we make it so that it is not possible to track crimes and put people in prison?

We have a Constitution that theoretically prevents the government from violating the rights of every person so that it may catch those few people who are committing crimes. Unfortunately the system of checks and balances that is supposed to be in place to stop the government from violating our privacy, rights and human dignity is entirely broken (if not non-existent) as abundantly chronicled for everyone who has paid attention.

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-04-29/fbi-searc...

https://www.aclu.org/legal-document/united-states-v-moalin-n...

https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2014/12/a-brief...

https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/fisa-court-issues-rare-order...

Re: The Ethereum merge is done

#930

Post by joshspankit »

elevaet wrote: post #541
Waterluvian wrote: post #451

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not using up a goat load of electricity is like 99% of why this change is great. Let people speculate on their funny money without harming everyone. A lateral move on the other details is rather unsurprising.

Agreed. My top concern with cryptocurrency is the huge waste of energy inherent to PoW. It's really, really good to see ETH pull this off. There are a pile of other problems in crypto, but it's fantastic to see this biggest (IMO) issue addressed by the #2 cryptocurrency. I actually thought it might never happen. It's a day to celebrate for sure.

Honestly, PoW seems like a big problem but the reality is that miners have been boosting the solar companies. Solar is cheaper than most other power sources and any miner will tell you that the cheaper the power the more profit they make.
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