[HN Gopher] The Merge
___________________________________________________________________
The Merge
Author : night-rider
Score : 84 points
Date : 2022-08-19 10:31 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (avc.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (avc.com)
| kranke155 wrote:
| People should really try to understand what's happening in
| blockchain. Eventually the computational capacity will reach the
| levels that virtually any app can be replicated inside of it,
| with a much lower fee for the developers/owners/users and often
| having full open source code for the components. The blockchain
| development environment is fundamentally less terrible than the
| centralised database world, and eventually the computational
| differences between the two will be so low that centralised
| databases will be less desirable just because do the warp in the
| social contract.
|
| Databases encourage centralisation of power to developer/owners,
| with aggressive bent towards monopoly. Blockchain encouraged
| opennesss and portability. It's simply a better social contract.
| 0xcde4c3db wrote:
| > Eventually the computational capacity will reach the levels
| that virtually any app can be replicated inside of it, with a
| much lower fee for the developers/owners and having full open
| source code.
|
| How do you figure? Skilled developers have struggled to
| efficiently scale an application from one to two rack servers
| connected with Infiniband, never mind a hodgepodge of
| heterogeneous hardware and WAN interconnects running a
| distributed VM. There is nothing in blockchain (nor
| immutability generally) that actually addresses the underlying
| issues here, and if anything I would expect the requirement to
| cryptographically validate all data committed to the chain to
| make inefficiencies related to synchronization orders of
| magnitude worse, not better.
| kranke155 wrote:
| I assume something like Moore's Law applies tbh.
|
| I agree of course it makes order of magnitude slower. The
| point is - how long until this slow is good enough to perform
| immensely useful things, with a better distribution of wealth
| generation than the current datacenter model?
|
| I would say in the next 5 years we'll start seeing
| breakthrough apps.
|
| Like I said above I don't expect everything ever to go on
| chain in the near future, you can have very useful apps that
| only touch on chain for the truly necessary. Even doing the
| "truly necessary" was painful until very recently, but now
| with Ethereum Layer 2 solutions, Algorand, Polkadot and
| Solana, it's becoming more and more accessible over time.
| [deleted]
| dale_glass wrote:
| > I assume something like Moore's Law applies tbh.
|
| We're nearing the limits of physics already. I do expect
| hardware to get much faster still, but not forever and not
| as fast as now.
|
| > I agree of course it makes order of magnitude slower. The
| point is - how long until this slow is good enough to
| perform immensely useful things, with a better distribution
| of wealth generation than the current datacenter model?
|
| I think really never. Because the rest of the world doesn't
| sit idle, and most anything can be done the traditional
| way.
|
| You could pay huge $$$ to create a smart contract on ETH,
| or you could get more power than any normal person could
| afford on the Ethereum blockchain on the AWS EC2 free tier.
| If you think paying amounts with a few zeroes in them is a
| sensible thing, then you have far more computing power
| available.
|
| I think the only reason to use the blockchain is if you
| really need the blockchain. And the vast majority of
| computing doesn't. And as we're seeing, the blockchain is
| very much vulnerable if the world wants to push it around
| badly enough.
| kranke155 wrote:
| Mostly everything can be done in the traditional way -
| and much faster indeed. The point of blockchain is a
| superior social solution, not technical.
|
| I agree with you we will use blockchain where it's
| necessary, but I suspect that's a decent percentage of
| our future digital world.
| dale_glass wrote:
| > Mostly everything can be done in the traditional way -
| and much faster indeed. The point of blockchain is a
| superior social solution, not technical.
|
| That's highly arguable. It's a superior social solution
| if you buy into a very, very specific kind of "social",
| and are happy with systems that operate within a very
| limited realm.
|
| Eg, if you like the existence of things like chargebacks,
| then the blockchain isn't the kind of solution you want.
|
| And you also need for the entire problem to reside inside
| the blockchain ideally. Blockchains lose any power if
| they have to interact with the outside world. You can
| make guarantees around how ETH moves from A to B, but if
| say, a physical product is involved then the blockchain
| can't do anything about it.
| jameskilton wrote:
| kranke155 wrote:
| Feel free to do a point by point rebuttal.
| thedufer wrote:
| > Eventually the computational capacity will reach the
| levels that virtually any app can be replicated inside of
| it
|
| This only makes sense if blockchains can catch up to
| traditional methods, because applications in the real world
| will just continue to get more complex as compute power
| allows. A defining feature of blockchain computation models
| is that the same calculation must be run many, many times
| to verify it. Given that each individual one must run on
| the hardware that blockchain is competing with direct usage
| of, there's no plausible story for blockchain to close the
| gap.
|
| > with a much lower fee for the developers/owners/users and
| often having full open source code for the components.
|
| See above - how could running the same calculation many,
| many times, plus the networking costs to communicate, ever
| compete on price with just running it once? At least one,
| and more likely all, of the parties must lose in the
| blockchain model.
|
| > The blockchain development environment is fundamentally
| less terrible than the centralised database world
|
| Terrible in what way? It can't compute on price or compute
| power/latency/etc.
|
| > eventually the computational differences between the two
| will be so low
|
| Again - how? See above.
|
| > that centralised databases will be less desirable just
| because do the warp in the social contract.
|
| I can't come up with a way to parse this that has any
| meaning, so I'm not sure what to say about it.
|
| > Databases encourage centralisation of power to
| developer/owners, with aggressive bent towards monopoly.
| Blockchain encouraged opennesss and portability. It's
| simply a better social contract.
|
| This seems to be your only real argument - some vague
| social benefit. But how do we get there? See above -
| blockchains are far, far more expensive to run, so why
| would anyone migrate real applications to them? Even if
| this benefit were real, which I doubt, you don't seem to
| have any mechanism for making it work in the face of the
| very real costs of doing so.
|
| Regulation seems like the only plausible way, but anti-
| regulation and anti-government is a pretty explicit goal of
| most blockchain folks.
| boh wrote:
| People do understand. Please stop telling us how
| hypothetically, possibly, sometime in the future things may one
| day be somehow better and more amazing than it is today for
| some yet to be understood reason. You must not be paying
| attention to say something like "The blockchain development
| environment is fundamentally less terrible than the centralised
| database world" given the perpetual controversy in the
| developer communities of every major cryptocurrency.
| kranke155 wrote:
| NFTs work and they allow artists to
|
| - make money off digital art in a global permissionless
| market (didn't exist before) - easily charge royalties in
| perpetuity for resale of their art
|
| Some aspects of DeFi - the ones that were properly audited
| and whose function is not a ponzi derivative - work
| absolutely fine. Compound, AAVE, Uniswap, Curve Finance.
| jjulius wrote:
| >... easily charge royalties in perpetuity for resale of
| their art...
|
| Hi. Artist here. I have yet to actually see any example of
| this occurring with a piece of NFT art. Do you have an
| example of an NFT that is actively collecting royalties for
| the artist via resale?
| wanderingbort wrote:
| Sure, look at the last sale for this piece https://opense
| a.io/assets/ethereum/0x495f947276749ce646f68ac...
|
| The artist got 0.21 ETH in the transaction despite not
| actually having a direct role in the sale.
|
| Here is that sale transaction https://etherscan.io/tx/0xc
| d157ff73439e20903a8573ef2a280571a...
|
| Here is the artist's wallet https://etherscan.io/address/
| 0x4de5ae339b406a8cd5037e9138a62...
|
| I just picked a random entry, I don't know this piece or
| artist. There are a lot of examples easily found on the
| major markets (opensea is one such market)
| kranke155 wrote:
| Most markets allow you to set royalties for your NFT. I
| know Versum, Hic et Nunc, pretty sure Opensea. Almost
| certainly Foundation and Nifty and all the others must do
| it too?
| seibelj wrote:
| https://opensea.io/collection/nickelodeon-rugrats-
| heyarnold-...
|
| My company is one of the largest NFT companies. This is
| one of our projects. Millions of dollars in secondaries
| on OpenSea and our hosted marketplace at
| https://Nickelodeon.xyz/
|
| We collect all royalties and remit payment to the rights
| holders which include all artists and creators with
| residuals on Rugrats, of which there are many. They get
| their check quarterly along with all the other payments
| (movies, tshirts, video games, etc.)
|
| This isn't exactly rocket science
| polygamous_bat wrote:
| So, are you saying that you run a centralized third party
| that is charged with collecting the royalties and passing
| it on to the artists? Because nowhere in the ERC-721
| standard is there a way to differentiate between a "sale"
| and a "transfer between wallets".
|
| So tell me, please, exactly how "blockchain" is bringing
| "decentralization" to the art field. I am all ears.
| jonnydubowsky wrote:
| The Rarible exchange contract supports all kinds of
| external royalty interfaces, among them two that Rarible
| defined themselves, being an early player in the NFT
| space:
|
| https://hackernoon.com/enabling-nft-royalties-with-
| eip-2981
|
| ERC721, 1155 & 2981 together act as a toolkit for the
| encoding of royalty administration.
|
| For example, if an NFT collection owner only implemented
| one of Rarible's royalty distribution schemes mentioned
| above, another marketplace that's not aware of that
| interface can simply call the common registry's
| getRoyaltyView function. It tries to query all known
| royalty interfaces on the token contract and translates
| any response to a commonly useable result.
|
| Collection owners who haven't put any royalty signaling
| scheme into their contract can deploy an extended
| "override" contract and register it with the common
| registry. This registration method will ensure that only
| collection owners (identified by the owner public member)
| can call it
|
| The Rarible exchange contract supports all kinds of
| external royalty interfaces, among them two that Rarible
| defined themselves, being an early player in the NFT
| space:
|
| For example, if an NFT collection owner only implemented
| one of Rarible's royalty distribution schemes mentioned
| above, another marketplace that's not aware of that
| interface can simply call the common registry's
| getRoyaltyView function. It tries to query all known
| royalty interfaces on the token contract and translates
| any response to a commonly useable result.
|
| Collection owners who haven't put any royalty signaling
| scheme into their contract can deploy an extended
| "override" contract and register it with the common
| registry. This registration method will ensure that only
| collection owners (identified by the owner public member)
| can call it
|
| ```function royaltyInfo(uint256 _tokenId, uint256
| _salePrice) external view returns (address receiver,
| uint256 royaltyAmount);```
|
| The interface also completely works off-chain, so
| marketplaces that trade assets on alternative
| infrastructure can still query the creator fee without
| knowing anything else besides the interface signature of
| the EIP-2981 method.
|
| PaymentSplitters: Sending NFT Royalties To More Than One
| Receiver.
|
| Open Zeppelin's PaymentSplitter primitive allows setting
| up individual split contracts that keep funds safe until
| their payees claim them, and their receive function
| requires the bare minimum of gas to run. NFT collection
| builders can create an inline PaymentSplitter containing
| the wanted list of beneficiaries and their respective
| share amounts and let their EIP-2981 implementation yield
| the address of that split contract.
| seibelj wrote:
| A sale happens in a marketplace. Marketplaces collect
| royalties and forward them to the address specified. We
| are indeed a centralized player, just as all NFT creators
| are centralized entities (i.e. people) but the assets
| trade on decentralized networks.
|
| I think you have a fundamental misunderstanding of how
| all of this works and have a sneering, dismissive affect
| because this is something you don't understand embraced
| by people who don't care what you think.
| kareemsabri wrote:
| So if they don't use your marketplace are the royalties
| not collected?
| rcthompson wrote:
| Of all the artists I follow, not a single one has had
| anything good to say about NFTs. Their only interaction
| with NFTs has been dozens of scammers fraudulently minting
| NFTs of all their work, followed by exchanges putting the
| burden of proof on the artist to show that each individual
| NFT is fraudulent.
|
| Maybe there's some legitimate business happening in the art
| NFT space, but if so, it's a drop in an ocean of fraud.
| kranke155 wrote:
| There's huge amounts of legitimate business happening in
| NFTs. I would find it hard to imagine an argument that
| Beeple's huge sale was somehow not legitimate.
|
| I'm hoping a technical solution appears soon for fraud.
| NFT fraud is no different from a person on the street
| doing a high quality print of someone else's artwork, and
| unlike that situation, a technical solution for NFT fraud
| is conceivable.
| zimpenfish wrote:
| > I would find it hard to imagine an argument that
| Beeple's huge sale was somehow not legitimate.
|
| An argument that Beeple's huge sale was somehow not
| legitimate: https://amycastor.com/2021/03/14/metakovan-
| the-mystery-beepl...
| foepys wrote:
| > - easily charge royalties in perpetuity for resale of
| their art
|
| Can they really? The art itself is not recorded on any
| blockchain. Just the link and/or hash can be stored there
| because of costs. Both can change without noticeably
| modifying the art. Thus a working legal system is still
| required and blockchain does not provide any meaningful
| benefit over a standard contract.
| kranke155 wrote:
| Those two things don't cancel each other out.
|
| The art being recorded on a blockchain or not doesn't
| matter - what you're selling in an NFT is a signature not
| the art. An NFT is a decoupling of the art and the
| signature, because digital art is infinitely
| reproducible. The NFT introduces scarcity - but only for
| an authentic signature (which can't be faked) not the
| digital art itself.
|
| And want you're saying is not necessarily true - my
| understanding is that some markets do place the art on
| IPFS, but I'd have to look into it's exact working to
| know for sure.
|
| But I believe for the old Hic et Nunc that was the case.
|
| In this particular case - it is better than a standard
| contract because the previous method of authenticating
| work is hugely expensive for the artist and has immense
| gatekeeping. Minting an NFT takes 30 seconds. Getting you
| work into an art gallery takes months if not years of
| battling and requires other people to make the decision
| whether they want your art in their sales space or not.
| In crypto you can just do it yourself and figure out your
| own personal authentication method (usually twitter).
| kkielhofner wrote:
| My NFT anti-fraud solution has ~195m NFTs indexed and
| analyzed (everything on Ethereum, Polygon, and Solana).
| Here's the breakdown of current storage methods across
| all of them:
|
| curl
| https://match.tovera.com/api/v0/stats/nft/storageMethods
|
| [ { "storage": "https", "ratio":
| "0.39163250000000000000", "counted_at":
| "2022-08-20T05:55:01.164Z" }, { "storage": "ipfs",
| "ratio": "0.58654950000000000000", "counted_at":
| "2022-08-20T05:55:01.164Z" }, { "storage": "unknown",
| "ratio": "0.00090250000000000000", "counted_at":
| "2022-08-20T05:55:01.164Z" }, { "storage": "chain",
| "ratio": "0.01584000000000000000", "counted_at":
| "2022-08-20T05:55:01.164Z" }, { "storage": "http",
| "ratio": "0.00507550000000000000", "counted_at":
| "2022-08-20T05:55:01.164Z" } ]
|
| 2% on chain (almost all SVGs), 60% on IPFS, and 40% on
| HTTPS (total above 100% because I rounded).
| kranke155 wrote:
| Thank you for this. The fact that you did this shows that
| there is a potential for a solution for NFT/art copies.
| Hopefully markets will begin doing this themselves and
| stop this plague.
| te_chris wrote:
| Decoupling of the art and the signature??? Do you read
| what you write before you write it?
|
| There's a reason NFTs are easy and gallery placements are
| hard: one has value
| kranke155 wrote:
| people are making millions of dollars from NFTs, but
| sure. You're the determiner for what has value in the
| world.
| dale_glass wrote:
| The NFT market has been briefly popular and since then
| has cratered. Also there's a huge amount of wash trading,
| so most of that activity isn't even real.
| kranke155 wrote:
| Throwing the baby with the bath water. The baby is small
| and there is a lot of water, but the baby is there.
| dale_glass wrote:
| I'm not sure how this comment answers what I said
| Kbelicius wrote:
| > In this particular case - it is better than a standard
| contract because the previous method of authenticating
| work is hugely expensive for the artist and has immense
| gatekeeping. Minting an NFT takes 30 seconds.
|
| As you said NFT is just a signature so how do the NFTs
| solve the problems of authenticating art?
| kkielhofner wrote:
| They don't. An example search from my NFT anti-fraud
| solution:
|
| https://fnftf.io/?results=982ce32629ebcbd7dce30baf2f84ada
| fb5...
|
| So there you have it - dozens of copies of the same art
| across the same chain and other chains plus dozens of
| other low-quality "remixes" that don't qualify as an
| original work. Nothing in the space (other than solutions
| like mine) do anything to authenticate the content in any
| form or fashion.
|
| In fact, on FNFTF we make a pretty big deal of searches
| that only return one result (original and unique content)
| because it doesn't happen very often:
|
| https://fnftf.io/?results=81cd744ab237b0eb68fbe1702c82db9
| cdf...
|
| Shameless plug I suppose but there isn't anything else
| publicly available that shows just how bad and widespread
| this issue is.
| kranke155 wrote:
| I'm sure what you mean. NFTs allow for a market for
| digital art, in that there's an immutable ledger where
| artists can say "I am selling 10 'signed artworks' of
| this piece". Because the ledger is known to be immutable,
| and it allows for transactions between users, you have a
| market where there wasn't one before.
|
| The problem of authenticating art before this, for a
| digital artist, was that you HAD to have a gallery do it
| with you in order for it to work. No one trusted anyone,
| not even the artist, to say that there would only be "10
| copies" of that digital artwork, since they couldn't do
| any follow through if the artist decided to say there
| were ten copies but sold 10 000. This was an issue with
| digital art that was previously only solved by the
| reputation of X art gallery - the art gallery would say -
| "we certified only 10 copies, and our reputation as a
| gallery protects this artwork from being certified
| again".
|
| With NFTs you just do it. The problem was gatekeeping,
| the need for an "authority" to certify your signatures on
| digital art, and the process involved. NFTs are a click
| of a button and a few dollars to mint.
|
| Does that answer your question?
| dale_glass wrote:
| > The problem of authenticating art before this, for a
| digital artist, was that you HAD to have a gallery do it
| with you in order for it to work. No one trusted anyone,
| not even the artist, to say that there would only be "10
| copies" of that digital artwork, since they couldn't do
| any follow through if the artist decided to say there
| were ten copies but sold 10 000. This was an issue with
| digital art that was previously only solved by the
| reputation of X art gallery - the art gallery would say -
| "we certified only 10 copies, and our reputation as a
| gallery protects this artwork from being certified
| again".
|
| > With NFTs you just do it.
|
| No, you can't. Anybody can go right now and mint their
| own series of BAYC or any artwork they want. The
| blockchain will allow it. It won't even care if you mint
| it against the exact same data, because as far as I know
| nothing in the blockchain cares that there's more than
| one NFT pointing to the same URL, or pointing to an URL
| that resolves to content bit-by-bit identical to
| something somebody else already minted.
|
| The only guarantee you can have is an extremely weak one,
| in the form of "this precise collection, with this
| precise unique ID is set in stone". That's not going to
| stop anybody from creating another one 5 minutes later.
| mpeg wrote:
| This is incorrect, as the parent explained the point of
| an NFT is the signature, this proves you bought from a
| certain collection _that was created by a certain wallet_
|
| You can create your own BAYC, scammers do it all the time
| but they aren't too successful because it's trivial to
| see it came from an unknown wallet.
|
| Sure, you could infringe on the copyright of a non-crypto
| artist and pretend to be the artist in an NFT
| marketplace, but then it becomes a normal copyright claim
|
| NFTs don't replace the legal system, they simply remove
| the need for the artist to be trusted by a third party
| (an art gallery, etc) before they can authenticate their
| own work to a buyer.
| dale_glass wrote:
| > This is incorrect, as the parent explained the point of
| an NFT is the signature, this proves you bought from a
| certain collection that was created by a certain wallet
|
| Note that the parent seems to be arguing something in the
| system removes the need to trust in the artist, that it
| stops the artist from creating more items than they
| promised. But how? Nothing stops the artist from creating
| a second wallet, or a second collection.
|
| > NFTs don't replace the legal system, they simply remove
| the need for the artist to be trusted by a third party
| (an art gallery, etc) before they can authenticate their
| own work to a buyer.
|
| I don't see how. How do I know that a given wallet ID is
| connected to the right person? OpenSea or whoever just
| takes the place of the gallery, and is effectively in
| charge of answering takedown requests.
| kranke155 wrote:
| It doesn't stop the artist from re minting the same art,
| but if he does it will be associated to his wallet, his
| reputation will be tarnished, an they won't be able to
| keep selling their art. The incentives are hugely against
| it, and unlike even physical art (who stops me from
| painting the same piece 20 times in secret) the ledger
| for the existence of the NFT is public.
| wanderingbort wrote:
| You are correct. NFTs do not prevent counterfeiting. One
| could argue that it makes counterfeiting easier due to
| their open nature.
|
| However, it also makes detecting counterfeits trivial. So
| trivial that the consumer can detect it using their own
| devices and freely available wallet software. No need for
| special skills or trust anchors like appraisers (other
| than the public blockchain and public standards).
|
| This isn't a complete solution for scams because most
| people don't realize how trivial it is to check before
| they buy. I believe the remaining problems are in
| usability and education problem. The tech does lower the
| barrier to achieving a safer ecosystem.
|
| We could have a healthy debate over whether the tech
| solved the hard side or the easy side of the problem.
| dale_glass wrote:
| > However, it also makes detecting counterfeits trivial.
| So trivial that the consumer can detect it using their
| own devices and freely available wallet software.
|
| Only so long that the authentic source is present. You
| can detect the authentic BAYC because BAYC has a large
| presence and everyone knows their wallet ID.
|
| Now let's say I take a photo, and you find a NFT for it
| on OpenSea. How do you know if it's authentic?
| wanderingbort wrote:
| If you (the artist) have no presence in NFTs, it's fake.
|
| If you do, then I can trivially verify that you are the
| minter.
|
| Crucially, the person that has the incentive to mint (the
| artist) also has all they need to establish the
| provenance of the photo.
|
| No 3rd parties, no specialized tools/skills.
| dale_glass wrote:
| Okay, and how do you know whether I have a presence in
| NFTs? Go and check, and do tell me how you figure it out.
| wanderingbort wrote:
| I think you are coming at this the wrong direction.
|
| As a buyer I have to have some compulsion to buy. If that
| is not "I want to buy an authentic piece tied to an
| artist" NFTs probably aren't for you.
|
| With NFTs I can start at either the artist or the piece
| and trivially connect to the other.
|
| NFTs don't solve for discovery.
|
| Nor do they provide a root of trust for artist identity.
| At best they can provide information to some sort of
| identity system but NFTs by themselves are not a complete
| solution for that.
|
| As an artist who wants to sell an NFT, the onus is on you
| to broadcast your presence/address so that your buyers
| can check provenance. Post it on your Instagram maybe. It
| doesn't have to be magical.
| klez wrote:
| That rises another question, imho: who cares?
|
| I don't mean that in a dismissive way, I actually mean
| why is authenticity important or even desirable when
| using a medium that allows for infinite copies at near-
| zero marginal cost?
|
| It's just not the right medium for it. It would be like
| expecting to be able to digitally transfer a statue.
| solveit wrote:
| This has been mysterious to me for a long time and it
| still remains mysterious to me, but I have to accept that
| people do care. This isn't just limited to NFTs, people
| buy signed copies of things despite signatures being
| trivial to forge, people buy authentic branded items even
| when indistinguishable counterfeits are available, people
| pay more for "original prints" of _digital_ photographs!
|
| In short, people care about _provenance_. NFTs guarantee
| provenance for data, even if the process of "attaching"
| it to a jpg or whatever is a bit clunky. I don't
| understand why people care so much about provenance, but
| they do, and NFTs provide a partial solution.
| Kbelicius wrote:
| > Does that answer your question?
|
| No it doesn't. Your claim was that NFTs make
| authenticating art easier. What you wrote has nothing to
| do with art authentication.
|
| Basically I can take some digital art made by somebody
| else and be the first to release an NFT of it. What now?
| How does an NFT help us here?
| kranke155 wrote:
| It doesn't. It just allow for a market of digital
| signatures for digital art. but technical solutions to
| the problems you're talking about are conceivable.
| kranke155 wrote:
| Im not sure what you mean by perpetual controversy either.
|
| What I mean by "less terrible" is socially, not technically.
|
| Centralised datacenter based development leads to digital
| feudalism, where the owners of the datacenters take control
| of the "digital land" and build moats around them (often
| fake, imaginary - see how text messaging has no
| interoperability anymore when 10 years ago it did)
|
| In blokchain / decentralised databases development this is
| not possible - people can always access the data that's on
| chain, and they can extend your code, see it, change it
| (depending on the license even copy it and just make a
| slightly different product, a la Uniswap V2 and Sushi Swap).
| This leads to a real free market for applications, instead of
| the digital feudalism that naturally results from centralised
| data centers.
| ctxc wrote:
| - Who pays for the low latency high capacity data storage
| costs? - The ad-model subsidizes almost all costs for the
| end user. I couldn't even DREAM of storing an arbitrary
| amount of photos and videos and text spanning years, highly
| available all the time, ability to search and communicate
| with anybody etc for free without this. There are huge
| costs involved with this that the "data moat" subsidizes.
|
| Note that I'm not referring to the "morals" of doing this,
| my question is pragmatic.
|
| - Why will say, a Facebook do this with "decentralized
| data"? - How do they pay their bills, what monetization
| structure do you envision? - Will people pay for something
| they have always had for free? It won't be a nominal amount
| since they have to bear the costs of running the service,
| there's no subsidization.
| kranke155 wrote:
| Those are all great questions. I honestly don't expect
| rich media to be stored on chain for a long, long time -
| not unless some Pied Piper type solution shows up!
|
| On monetisation structures - no idea, the only thing
| blockchain does is build a permissionless system where
| people will be able to experiment wildly with different
| models. Like Jobs said when he launched the iPhone "I'm
| excited about the stuff we don't know about" more than
| what's out there now (Ethereum being at best now a rough
| Beta project).
|
| Certainly the monetisation of digital art has changed a
| lot of what some of my favourite 3D artists have been
| doing - they no longer compete for likes on Instagram
| (worthless) but actively promote their NFTs from which
| they can make good money out of. They are producing the
| exact same kind of output - digital art - but NFTs are
| quietly taking over the whole space and changing the
| whole economic structure.
| pionar wrote:
| > actively promote their NFTs from which they can make
| good money out of.
|
| People pay for inherently worthless NFTs with inherently
| worthless tokens, so they're not making good actual money
| unless they happen to cash out on an upswing.
| kranke155 wrote:
| Thinking that cryptocurrency doesn't have value at this
| point is a hopeless perspective.
| klez wrote:
| > people can always access the data that's on chain
|
| Doesn't that have heavy privacy implications? Or is this a
| solved problem the solution to which doesn't get much
| publicized?
| kranke155 wrote:
| That's a good point I don't have a rebuttal to.
|
| The potential dystopia is that crypto can lead to
| something like a digital society that's completely naked
| to the nation state and everyone knows what everyone else
| has done, forever, always. Every transaction, movement
| and digital app usage would be in a transparent public
| ledger with everyone's IDs attached to it.
|
| It's not a good scenario and which is why I feel like any
| idea that CBDCs are a good idea seem delusional.
| rglover wrote:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UAVImvzFhXI
| thematrixturtle wrote:
| A less starry-eyed take:
|
| https://davidgerard.co.uk/blockchain/2022/08/20/proof-of-sta...
| baobabKoodaa wrote:
| I usually judge arguments on their merits, but on this case
| I'll make an exception and judge by the credibility of the
| author: that article is not worth reading. David Gerard is a
| permabear who has been criticizing crypto for about a decade
| now. Everything that happens in crypto is bad according to him.
| Ethereum moves to PoS? Bad. Ethereum doesn't move to PoS? Bad.
| There's no event in crypto that would be positive according to
| him.
| nibbleshifter wrote:
| Oh, that guy. He tends to be technically incorrect regularly
| and gets rather arsey when you call him on it.
| seibelj wrote:
| He is a crank, he does post here sometimes to bicker with you
| which can be amusing
| Keeeeeeeks wrote:
| The core axiom is unfalsifiable because it hinges on asserting
| the intent, and relying on other unfalsifiable questions to try
| and ascertain intent ("why do decentralization if not to avoid
| legal risk of doing bad things?"), but the answers proposed by
| crypto proponents aren't ideals or scenarios that the writer
| empathizes with, it seems
| TakeBlaster16 wrote:
| No mention of sanctions?
|
| It's estimated that ~50% of staked value is held by US companies.
| These companies are going to have to make an impossible choice.
| Either:
|
| 1. Sign transactions coming from the sanctioned addresses,
| inviting the wrath of OFAC.
|
| or:
|
| 2. Refuse to sign these transactions.
|
| 2a. If between 33% and 66% of the network refuses, the network
| will penalize dissenters by slashing their staked coins, until
| they no longer have a 33% stake. Billions of dollars of customer
| funds could be lost.
|
| 2b. If > 67% of the network refuses, transactions can be
| successfully censored. Now we no longer have decentralized ETH,
| we have "USA coin", where the government can censor anyone with a
| quick email to Brian Armstrong.
|
| I don't see a way out. It doesn't look like the network is
| actually decentralized enough to handle a nation-state attack.
| This was not an issue with the old proof of work scheme. I'll be
| amazed if the merge is not delayed while they work on a solution
| to this.
|
| EDIT: If Coinbase does lose that money, you could say the network
| is operating as designed in the presence of a hostile validator.
| But a LOT of people are not going to be happy with the result.
| RichardCNormos wrote:
| In the US, it would end up in court. It directly pits fiduciary
| duty against OFAC.
|
| For example, if a US-based CEX that operates in New York has a
| slashing event, that brings regulatory consequences from NYDFS,
| regardless of the reason for the slashing.
| kortilla wrote:
| Not really. You can't have a fiduciary duty to break the law.
| The downside risk is much higher to violate OFAC.
| scyclow wrote:
| Re 2b: While the scenario you're outlining certainly isn't
| ideal, I don't think it's fair to say that the transactions are
| "censored". All they can do is not validate blocks with this
| transactions in them. It's only a matter of time though before
| a block is validated by someone not under the purview by OFAC.
| [deleted]
| TakeBlaster16 wrote:
| All blocks are voted on by the validators. If 67% of the
| network is censoring transactions, someone else could not
| just pop in and validate a block, because they would not have
| 67% of the votes.
| jrsj wrote:
| This isn't a bug, it's a feature. It's also something Bitcoin
| maximalists have been warning about for a long time.
| aboodman wrote:
| I guess another potential option is that companies that stake
| large amounts of ETH don't exist in the US?
| randomran01234 wrote:
| > This was not an issue with the old proof of work scheme.
|
| Censorship of transactions because of OFAC is already happening
| in PoW mining.
|
| https://twitter.com/takenstheorem/status/1560690035955011585...
| globalreset wrote:
| Except in in PoW it only means delayed transactions, because
| only one miner has to "sign off" the block - everyone else
| accept it passively. A single miner, even with 0.1% mining
| power is enough to keep the network censorship resistant.
|
| In PoS majority of validators has to actively approve a block
| containing "illegal" transactions, leading to permanent
| censorship.
|
| The exact interpretation of validation vs mining
| responsibility in face of law and passive vs active is fuzzy
| , but it leaves miners is better legal position.
| robcohen wrote:
| A better legal position, until that is it's made illegal to
| accept unapproved blocks. PoW is not immune to the exact
| same regulatory pressure. The US gov can just force a fork
| of the chain by requiring US miners to only accept approved
| blocks.
| 0x64 wrote:
| You are wrong about the majority of validators having to
| approve a certain transaction for them to be included. Even
| if 80 % of the network were censoring, those transactions
| would, on average, make it into every fifth block.
| randomran01234 wrote:
| Can you point to any sources? I would like to read about
| how this will be accepted even if the majority is against
| inclusion.
| 0x64 wrote:
| Because not attesting is against the network's fork-
| choice rules. If that censoring majority chooses to avoid
| said block, because it contains transactions that should
| be censored, they will perform an illegal re-org around
| the block. Sure, it won't be "illegal" as a majority of
| the network follows said re-org.
|
| It's an extremely nuanced topic, and it was extensively
| discussed in the last core-developer call on Thursday.
| Every single operator has been warned that going against
| the fork-choice rules could, and ultimately will, result
| in social mitigations against spec-deviating behavior.
|
| This could be set of socially executed slashings of
| validators that don't respect the fork-choice rules, or
| an honest-minority executed hard-fork that effectively
| causes misbehaving validators to bleed until they start
| respecting the protocol's rules.
|
| I could be wrong on multiple counts, especially regarding
| re-orgs, but this is how I've understood the issue.
| brian_cloutier wrote:
| PoS seems very similar to PoW, and if one is fine (as we
| seem to think), the other is fine too.
|
| In POW there are only block producers, and producing a
| block requires actively choosing transactions and
| transaction ordering.
|
| Ethereum POS includes an additional attestation step where
| validators confirm that they have seen blocks without
| exercising any control over the contents of those blocks.
|
| But this is exactly what PoW miners do when they extend the
| chain: every block is a vote for all previous blocks in the
| chain.
| randomran01234 wrote:
| Interesting, so this is a problem if 66% or more decide to
| reject a transaction. How many blocks are currently signed
| by solo miners in PoW? Almost all blocks are signed by
| pools which looks like the PoS committees in practice yo my
| naive eyes. A miner with 0.1% hash power would probably be
| a _very_ long delay.
|
| I do agree this is probably the most concerning thing that
| Tornado Cash sanctions have shown us. Still don't think the
| energy cost of PoW is worth it, and would rather see PBS
| and crList solve this problem.
|
| https://notes.ethereum.org/@fradamt/H1ZqdtrBF
| TakeBlaster16 wrote:
| The difference is that PoW pools are made up of
| individual miners who are free to go elsewhere if their
| pool misbehaves. Pools do not have their own mining
| hardware, and so they have an economic incentive to be
| well-behaved. If they misbehave, everybody leaves and
| they vaporize their business overnight.
|
| PoS is tyranny of the majority: You cannot take your
| business elsewhere.
| randomran01234 wrote:
| It's the same with staking. If you aren't solo staking,
| you are just delegating to a staking pool. And you can
| withdraw that and deposit it elsewhere if they do not
| align with your values.
| TakeBlaster16 wrote:
| Again, it is not possible for staking pools to differ on
| "values". If a validator does not vote with the majority,
| their funds will be slashed by the protocol.
| [deleted]
| randomran01234 wrote:
| Trying to understand how this differs in practice. Anyone
| delegating to a staking pool is forced into their values.
| Ethermine recently started blocking OFAC transactions, so
| does the majority of miners in that pool agree with this?
| If so, what is the defence against censorship in this
| scenario except for some to exit the pool and use another
| that aligns with their values?
| TakeBlaster16 wrote:
| Ethereum is still using PoW as of today, so anything
| Ethermine did recently isn't really relevant to
| discussions about PoS. As long as Ethereum is using PoW,
| pools of any size can pick and choose what transactions
| to include in a block. Once Ethereum switches to PoS,
| that will no longer be possible (without further protocol
| changes)
| camjohnson26 wrote:
| That appears to be a single miner, so the transactions will
| still go through.
| paulpauper wrote:
| so what if more do it? then you got a problem. just 3
| miners control >50%
| flotzam wrote:
| > 2b. If > 67% of the network refuses, transactions can be
| successfully censored.
|
| Similar with PoW. For both PoW and PoS, the proper response is
| to socially coordinate forking out the censoring block producer
| majority (like with the Bitcoin UASF that was threatened over
| much less egregious miner misbehavior). PoS improves on PoW
| here in two ways:
|
| 1. _Non-censoring_ PoS block producers can have a tiny
| meatspace presence compared to PoW mining operations, which
| makes it easier to physically evade pro-censorship forces
|
| 2. It's more effective to coordinate a direct confiscation of
| the _censoring_ PoS block producers ' on-chain capital
| investment, compared to making miners' equipment partially
| obsolete by coordinating an ad-hoc redesign of the PoW
| algorithm
|
| https://nitter.net/dystopiabreaker/status/156071598642414796...
| syntheweave wrote:
| "Socially coordinating" is how fiat works. It should only be
| a bootstrapping mechanism towards trustless behaviors, not
| the mechanism to cancel each other on-chain.
| tromp wrote:
| With PoW, even if a majority of hashpower refuses to include
| a particular transaction in their mempool (and hence in
| blocks they mine), that transaction can be mined by some
| minority miner.
|
| It's only when the majority is colluding to reorg the chain
| that the transaction can be censored.
| flotzam wrote:
| > It's only when the majority is colluding to reorg the
| chain that the transaction can be censored.
|
| I'm assuming (like in the last tweets of the linked thread)
| that pro-censorship forces who can arrange for the
| supermajority in PoS to censor transactions can also
| arrange for the majority in PoW to not build on any
| uncensored head of the chain, i.e. they can mandate "always
| reorg."
| pa7x1 wrote:
| This is true also in PoS. If 90% of the validators censor a
| transaction, i.e. Do not include them in their blocks, the
| censored transactions would take 10x longer to be included
| but they would be included eventually.
| zionic wrote:
| This is in fact already a problem with PoW and is happening
| right now. AFAIK ether mine stopped including TC transactions
| in their blocks.
| kranke155 wrote:
| "The idea of apolitical money is a fantasy"
|
| Yannis Varoufakis, London, circa 2017
|
| Either crypto follows the law or it gets banned. IMO this was
| inevitable.
| silentsea90 wrote:
| You present a problem with Proof of Stake as an inevitable
| run in with the law and/or some folly of the crypto
| community. That's not very sound logic.
|
| I personally believe in apolitical decentralized money
| winning against fiat which is governed on the whims of
| central bankers and crony capitalism. Every system where
| technology brings fairness, power to all, and hard rules
| wins. This will not be an exception. It is the separation of
| money and state, not very dissimilar from church and state,
| monarchy and nationhood etc.
| RandomLensman wrote:
| It's fine to want a different society/policies, but you
| need to expand on how that new society should look like
| then: How would sanctions work, for example? Or if there
| are none, will there be other means of defense/offense? Who
| would set the rules of the monetary system and what would
| give legitimacy to those rule setters? How to move from the
| old system to the new without (too much) disruption? ...
|
| The endings of proper monarchies weren't always simple and
| nice events - if that is the magnitude of change you have
| in mind.
| silentsea90 wrote:
| Sanctions don't stem from the existence of Fiat currency
| (at least directly), and may still exist depending on
| power dynamics. The move is on the way and will continue.
| It will be disruptive but I'm not sure exactly how it'll
| go. Regular military offense and defense systems will
| exist but just not ones where the US say prints infinite
| money for war and incurs sovereign debt. Wars might be a
| lot smaller scale then. Old world wars required rulers to
| raise money, taxation etc. They didn't print out of thin
| air, or bankrupt entire nations (eg Weimar Germany)
|
| Non Fiat money has been the norm pre unpegged Fiat. It's
| been around for 2-3k years at least, whereas unpegged
| Fiat is 50 years old. I'm surprised we find the fall of
| Fiat as hard to imagine:)
| HelloNurse wrote:
| What "hard rules" can compete with actually enforced law?
| Don't you expect more "whims" (and scams) from private
| adventurers than from governments?
| silentsea90 wrote:
| I expect all parties to act in their own best interests.
| I do in fact expect more scams from private bodies, but
| the government conducts a much larger scam in printing
| without accountability a currency unbacked by anything
| and not bound to any rules, a billion ton gorilla that
| moves the "free" markets at it's whim.
|
| The people's interest imo is in fairness to all not asset
| owners who aren't as affected by money printing etc
|
| The law isn't sacrosanct, but of course it needs to be
| followed. It is malleable and comes from lawmakers who
| may or may not represent the interest of the people,
| unwittingly or otherwise
| Vespasian wrote:
| The power of law comes from the ability, to confiscate
| things, kick in doors and arrest people. Usually there is
| some social consensus such that most comply anyway most of
| the time.
|
| This is true and always and trumps whatever your software
| says is meaningless if there is any conflict ("you and what
| army" is a very valid question.
|
| Now, the law (a court) can of course allow your software
| and might even enforce a contract bases on your software
|
| In good systems the governed people have a say in how those
| laws are created. In Bad ones it's literally whatever one
| person mutters with a mouth full of breakfast cereals and
| headaches.
| manigandham wrote:
| Crypto itself can cross borders as a intangible virtual
| entity. You cannot. Your physicality means you're bounded
| by geographical borders to a nation state and thus its laws
| and regulations.
| nostrademons wrote:
| That assumes that people are the entities that the
| economy optimizes for, which hasn't been true for 10,000
| years or so. People are disposable to capitalism - there
| are 7.7 billion of us, which makes individual humans
| about as significant to the economy as individual neurons
| are to consciousness. As long as there exist some humans
| that are in a position to do the crypto-economy's
| bidding, it'll happen, and it doesn't matter if some of
| them are thrown in prison or executed or die from poor
| government policies.
|
| From the perspective of world history, this is a BFD. The
| monetary system of the past 80 years has been controlled
| by the ruling class of a ~150-300M person nation. The
| crypto economy imposes uniform rules on ~3B people, which
| is an order of magnitude greater complexity, and should
| see further specialization and gains from trade for those
| that participate in it.
| etaioinshrdlu wrote:
| Where is the evidence that a validator signing transactions
| invites the wrath if OFAC?
| rufusroflpunch wrote:
| Do you really think they wouldn't turn they screw when the
| time came?
| etaioinshrdlu wrote:
| They might, but speculating on what the Gov might do is
| tough. I was very convinced that Bitcoin and all
| derivatives would be outright illegal just a few years
| after they went mainstream, and that has definitely not
| happened. In a sense every self-hosted bitcoin wallet could
| be seen as violating payments laws.
| Ruphin wrote:
| Making it illegal to have Bitcoin is not very easy.
|
| What you call a "self-hosted bitcoin wallet" is just
| knowing some combination of bits that happens to be the
| private key that gives you the ability to sign
| transactions for some Bitcoin. How do you make it illegal
| to know something? What if I tell you my private key,
| does that mean you are then suddenly violating payments
| laws? What if you stumble upon it by accident?
|
| Technically any string of 32 bytes is a valid private key
| that can hold Bitcoin. There just might not be any
| Bitcoin in the address associated with it at this time.
| What if I "know" a random string of 32 bytes, am I then
| suddenly in violation of laws when someone randomly
| deposits Bitcoin to the corresponding address?
|
| The legal difficulty is that the action of having or
| holding Bitcoin (or mostly any cryptocurrency) is
| something that has no physical representation and is
| purely information based.
|
| Mining or making transactions is a different story
| altogether. These require, amongst other things, that you
| send specific digital information across the internet
| which is certainly something that can be made illegal.
| mypastself wrote:
| Can someone clarify the point about expected price action changes
| for ETH/USD and other pairs?
|
| Presumably the author believes a smaller proportion of Ether will
| be regularly traded than on the PoW system, but will the total
| staked (i.e. held) amount be sufficient to impact prices
| significantly? Also, why would we expect stakers to not take
| their profits on a regular basis?
|
| What's the meaning (and reasoning behind) the following
| statement:
|
| > Ethereum will move from a system that has roughly $20mm a day
| of structural outflows to a system that has roughly a half a
| million dollars a day of structural inflows.
| wmf wrote:
| _Also, why would we expect stakers to not take their profits on
| a regular basis?_
|
| Currently it's impossible to unstake so the existing stakers
| are self-selected hodlers. Longer term some stakers will hodl
| and some will take profits.
| koolba wrote:
| Assuming a fork is expected and the PoW chain is running
| alongside the PoS chain, wouldn't this cause a massive run up in
| ETH holdings to end up with assets on both chains?
| foepys wrote:
| This already happened multiple times, e.g. Ethereum Classic and
| for Bitcoin with Bitcoin Cash a few years back.
|
| It created quite a bit of drama when exchanges refused to give
| customers the respective forked coins.
| silentsea90 wrote:
| Exchanges refused to give customers forked coins? Why?!
| wmf wrote:
| It takes a certain amount of development work for an
| exchange to support a new coin so sometimes they don't do
| it.
| silentsea90 wrote:
| I'm not sure it's that much work if there's something of
| tangible current value being held from their rightful
| owners, esp when they keep adding all sorts of coins.
| There should at least be a way to extract them even if
| the exchange doesn't support trading them
| landemva wrote:
| Those who care about claiming forks will not use an
| exchange. People have varying priorities.
| baobabKoodaa wrote:
| I agree that's the way the world should be, but it isn't.
| xorcist wrote:
| Forking a chain is trivial. There are websites that lets
| anyone do it with a single click.
|
| You can't realistically expect exchanges to trade all
| possible fork coins.
| thematrixturtle wrote:
| No, because the merge in itself does not create new value, it
| simply splits existing value in two. So 1 old PoW ETH today
| will be worth (say) 0.9 PoS ETH and 0.1 PoW ETH tomorrow.
|
| To be clear, that's the theory, reality is a little more
| complicated. This happened earlier with ETH and ETC, as well as
| BTC and a whole bunch of forks, and in practice there was
| always a bit of "value" created from thin air, at least
| temporarily, with original + fork > original before fork.
| yuan43 wrote:
| > Proof of Stake systems (of which they are many in the market
| already like Solana, Avalanche, etc) are considered more secure
| because the likelihood of a 51% attack is much lower. I don't
| plan to lay out the argument here, but suffice it to say that
| Ethereum is moving to a consensus mechanism that many consider to
| be more resistant to attack, making it even more secure than it
| has been.
|
| I don't think so. At best, we can say that the attack surface
| will have changed. How it has changed will unfold. But to claim
| that POS is "more resistant to attack" is complete rubbish and a
| sign the author is clueless about the technological
| ramifications.
|
| It's kind of like saying that traveling 2 miles below the ocean's
| surface by submarine is safer than traveling by car because you
| can't get hit by a drunk driver.
| silentsea90 wrote:
| +1 two different systems with their own pros and cons. So far
| PoW seems more resilient, but that may also have to do with
| Bitcoin treating nation states and centralized entities as
| adversaries from the start.
| derefr wrote:
| This wasn't supposed to be an argument about the relative
| exploitability of the attack-surfaces presented by
| implementations of the technologies of PoW and PoS consensus
| systems, though; but rather about the economics inherent in
| "cornering the market" in PoW vs PoS.
|
| PoW and PoS both allow a single party to unilaterally control
| the network _when they 're working exactly as intended_ -- just
| under conditions that are impractical in major networks. That
| impracticality can be measured in economic terms -- as a
| dollars-and-cents cost to acquire the assets necessary to take
| control.
|
| It's harder to buy out 51% of validation stake of a network of
| size N, than it is to buy the GPUs and the electricity to power
| them to do 51% of the mining for a network of size N. GPUs are
| technically unbounded -- you can just build your own fabs, if
| you really care -- and so the marginal cost of acquiring
| another GPU+electricity is constant. But stake is a pie; the
| marginal cost of acquiring more of it increases as less of it
| remains available on the market. (And many people will just
| never give theirs up, for ideological reasons.) Thus, it's
| harder to Sybil attack PoS than PoW.
| scottiebarnes wrote:
| 51% attacks aren't just a single actor dictating blocks, but
| the threat of a cartel of large stakeholders cooperating to
| attain 51% of vote power
| derefr wrote:
| Yes, and? This is orthogonal to PoW vs PoS. In either case,
| you can treat the resulting cartel as "a single party" for
| purposes of modelling them.
|
| It's also not really a scenario worth considering.
|
| In order to cooperate, the miners/validators need to have
| full alignment on their goals. Which is very unlikely for
| Sybil attacks, which almost always destroy systemic
| economic value -- including the value held by the
| attackers. You might be able to find e.g. a government who
| wants to do a Sybil attack to accomplish goal X, and are
| willing to burn down $N billion dollars of their own staked
| assets to do so; but can you find a bunch of other
| governments or large corporations who _also_ want to
| accomplish that same goal X more than they want their own
| stake-value? And who can be trusted to coordinate and not
| leak the plan?
|
| A Sybil attack is basically like a bank heist where the
| attacker(s) have to pull up to the bank in their own
| personal aircraft carriers (destroying said aircraft
| carriers in the process, from the hull damage of sliding
| along several city streets), without anyone realizing
| they're coming. You can _maybe_ theoretically do it as one
| entity with full internal goal-alignment. It 's much
| _harder_ to do it as multiple entities.
| scottiebarnes wrote:
| One relevant question is which system allows for the
| pooling of resources easier. In PoW you have mining
| pools, and a member changing pools is trivial as changing
| an address. In PoS you have large organizations like
| Coinbase running staking for users. Don't know how
| withdrawls will work, but that could be a very
| significant amount of eth. Coinbase would have to vote a
| certain way to comply with laws.
| derefr wrote:
| From the Coinbase User Agreement (https://www.coinbase.co
| m/legal/user_agreement/united_states#...):
|
| > 1.4. Governance and Voting. For certain Digital Assets,
| the underlying protocols offer stakers the ability to
| vote on matters related to the governance of protocol-
| level issues. Coinbase may or may not support voting for
| such assets, and may cease supporting voting at any time
| in its discretion. _Coinbase will comply with your
| instruction_ to vote your Supported Digital Assets to the
| extent Coinbase or its affiliate supports voting for such
| Supported Digital Assets. In certain cases, Coinbase may
| vote on your behalf where Coinbase or the applicable
| protocol does not support delegated voting; _in those
| instances, Coinbase will vote with the protocol's
| recommendation_.
|
| But what about jurisdictions that compel them to vote in
| certain ways?
|
| From the Coinbase page on Eth2 staking
| (https://help.coinbase.com/en/coinbase/trading-and-
| funding/co...):
|
| > To be eligible to stake ETH, you must: [...] Live in a
| jurisdiction eligible for ETH staking.
|
| > Which regions are eligible for ETH staking? [...]
| United States _(excluding Hawaii & New York)_
|
| In other words: they're just not going to offer the
| service in any place that compels them to vote a certain
| way.
|
| I presume most delegatable validators have chosen a
| similar option: avoiding the problem entirely by not
| taking anyone's money if they're from those
| jurisdictions. Just as most ICOs in 2017, when the US
| didn't have regulatory clarity on crypto being a security
| or not, just avoided the problem entirely by preventing
| (direct) sales to US-market investors.
| coralreef wrote:
| But what happens if/when a large amount of user ETH gets
| staked in a single country, in a few entities? End users
| don't have the motive or skills to move their ETH to
| platforms or systems that better protect
| decentralization. The downsides of PoS is worth
| exploring.
| thesausageking wrote:
| Ever since Fred pumped $Kin, I have a hard time taking anything
| he says about crypto seriously. Here he seems to be again
| talking his book, even when the facts don't agree with him.
| rufusroflpunch wrote:
| The idea that Proof of Stake is more secure against attack is
| beyond absurd, frankly. However you feel about the energy usage
| of proof of work consensus mechanisms, they are far more
| resistant to attack and centralization.
| randomran01234 wrote:
| Why? PoW can only afford to be attacked twice. It even has a
| name: "spawn camping." In proof of stake, this is pretty easy
| to defend against repeatedly.
|
| https://vitalik.ca/general/2020/11/06/pos2020.html
| cowtools wrote:
| I don't understand how PoS changes this. Also, that blog post
| does not consider CPU-mined PoW which is unprofitable for
| miners and sustained attackers.
| paulgb wrote:
| I agree that it's absurd today, but how many bitcoin halvings
| until it isn't? When people talk about the security of bitcoin,
| there's a tendency to pretend that the network's security isn't
| 98% subsidized by a diminishing pool of unminted bitcoin.
| cowtools wrote:
| There are cryptocurrencies like monero that have implemented
| a constant "tail emission" block reward to fight off selfish
| mining attacks. So that leads me to believe that's a threat
| specific to bitcoin's tokenomics and not PoW cryptocurrencies
| in general.
| landemva wrote:
| > they [PoW] are far more resistant to attack
|
| Many meanings of "attack". A year ago China attacked the miners
| and they mostly left China. A nation attacking the btc network
| is real, and the miners physically moved.
|
| It is easier to move a PoS validator, and harder to locate the
| validator in the first place.
| superb-owl wrote:
| This disclosure should be at the top of the article:
|
| > Disclosure: My family and USV have large holdings in ETH and
| other crypto assets and may continue to add to them in the coming
| weeks, months, and years.
| choppaface wrote:
| You can trust that any link from avc.com has unstated financial
| conflict of interest. These links get on the front page because
| people gawk at "VC said X" not because there's technical or
| even truthful discussion of X.
| gist wrote:
| Why is it needed at all though? (I know it's the 'style' to
| disclose like this). Fred is a VC and he is blogging. It's
| assumed he has some interest or bias and anyone reading should
| be skeptical. This is not a news story. He could have a bias or
| an angle even if he doesn't benefit.
|
| And what does 'large holdings' even mean anyway? Large to Fred
| what's large to Fred?
| camjohnson26 wrote:
| Most of the most knowledgeable people in the space probably
| have large holdings, since otherwise there's not much incentive
| to learn about it.
| eduction wrote:
| People don't need incentives to learn about technologies that
| solve real problems though. I saw the value in Macs, for
| example, without ever buying Apple shares, I use AWS without
| owning Amazon, I learned about Linux without profiting from
| its spread, etc.
|
| Update: My point is simply that if "most knowledgeable people
| in the space probably have large holdings" as was claimed,
| this is arguably an indictment of the technology under
| discussion here. Useful technologies tend to have enthusiasts
| with no direct financial stake in their success. The fact
| that people happen to invest in tech companies and do well,
| or that many have indirect financial incentives to embrace
| tech, is orthogonal to my point. It is weird if a given tech
| is entirely or largely carried by people directly invested in
| it. It raises questions of whether it is generally useful.
| People who want Fred to front load his disclaimer are
| probably thinking by along these lines.
| wanderingbort wrote:
| I can only speak for myself but I built software in the
| cryptocurrency/blockchain space for about 5 years before I
| held any as an investment.
|
| For me, the incentive was to learn about the tech for the
| sake of the tech. I actually wasn't a believer in
| cryptocurrency as a long term useful concept. I was
| building into spaces that would benefit from immutability
| and transparency where accountability was low (high risk
| businesses and government transparency)
|
| Really, it is something independent of the tech that
| allowed me to turn a corner on cryptocurrency. I accepted
| that large groups of believers can "create" value based on
| nothing but their shared willingness to continue to
| believe.
|
| Bitcoin and Ethereum have such a critical mass of believers
| IMO. I wasn't sure that the tech stack would live up to the
| hype but I was no longer worried that the price would drop
| to zero.
| dotBen wrote:
| They don't but realistically that is the incentive and
| motivation for many people - including technologists who
| ultimately decide to use their understanding of the market
| to leverage capital rather than code or perform a similar
| technical function.
|
| In your case one could argue that if you saw so much future
| value in the Mac/Apple ecosystem you missed out
| significantly by not purchasing Apple stock. Depending on
| when you made your observation, even a modest investment
| would have had a significant return over the past 20 years.
|
| I actually use the Amazon example when people tell me how
| worried they are about Amazon becoming all almighty and
| taking over all commerce - that if they actually believe
| that then they should probably buy Amazon stock and use the
| profits to do something to counter whatever negative effect
| they perceive.
|
| As a former software engineer and founder now VC what I
| personally realized is I could have the greatest impact on
| the industry from leveraging capital around my own industry
| thesis rather than continue to build it myself. It's all a
| layer cake.
| dataangel wrote:
| Is your career in a field where learning any of those
| things is useful? That's still a financial incentive.
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