[HN Gopher] Vitalik escalates ETH 2.0 merge as miners plan a 51%...
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Vitalik escalates ETH 2.0 merge as miners plan a 51% attack
Author : michaelsbradley
Score : 47 points
Date : 2021-03-12 21:49 UTC (1 hours ago)
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(TXT) w3m dump (our.status.im)
| Bluestein wrote:
| This could get really ugly.
|
| (Not only per se, but, also, as it really shows how "centralized"
| these suposedly decentralized systems are ...
|
| ... and -this- could have consequences.)
| moralestapia wrote:
| Not trying to be snarky but Vitalik itself is ETH's 51% attack
| ...
|
| What's the point of decentralized cryptocurrency when it falls
| down on the hands of one person.
| chizhik-pyzhik wrote:
| It's not really in the hands of one person, though. If the
| community diverges, two chains will be created, and the one
| will the most value will be considered the 'real' chain.
|
| This already happened once, and the less-popular chain became
| known as 'Ethereum Classic.' It's still around.
| DennisP wrote:
| At this point Vitalik is one researcher among many. He's taken
| care to remove himself from the "benevolent dictator" role he
| had at first.
|
| He is very productive though, and the other researchers and
| devs tend to find his ideas convincing.
| moralestapia wrote:
| "A group of researchers" still doesn't feel like
| decentralized to me.
| snissn wrote:
| miners vs coders is very decentralized to me :) let the
| miners have their own chain!
| nodesocket wrote:
| From my point of view, burning of transaction fees seems like a
| good solution and idea. Miners are just being babies. There are
| risks in all businesses, and miners should be aware and account
| for such risks. When things don't work out your way, your
| solution should not be to take down the entire infrastructure
| that fed you.
| Sargos wrote:
| Vitalik is very popular because he is heavily respected. Even
| with that said he cannot get people to make a controversial
| change as the overall Ethereum community, not just the miners
| and core devs, decides whether a new proposal is safe enough.
| yawaworht1978 wrote:
| Decentralized 51% attack...
|
| Not the first very profound eth conflict.
| Bluestein wrote:
| Anybody remember Eth Classic, etc.?
| moralestapia wrote:
| That "little thing" when they rolled out contracts and pretty
| much showed how easy it was to manipulate the currency at
| their whim ...
| Bluestein wrote:
| You know. Just a pesky detail.
| typest wrote:
| I'm not an expert, but if 51% of the _existing hashpower_ doesn
| 't want a change, it sounds less a 51% attack and more like
| miners voting against something that isn't in their interest. The
| whole point of blockchains is that the incentives are supposed to
| be aligned between miners and users. If that isn't the case here,
| it sounds like a problem.
| georgyo wrote:
| Crypto miners and and crypto users are aligned in the same way
| banks and customers are aligned.
| chizhik-pyzhik wrote:
| It is a problem. That's a big reason for moving from proof-of-
| work to proof-of-stake- to more directly make the _holders_ of
| Ethereum in charge of the chain.
|
| It's a difficult thing to do, though. Hashpower based mining is
| easier to get going. Proof of stake has issues like the
| nothing-at-stake problem, where theoretically you could stake-
| mine on multiple chains:
| https://ethereum.stackexchange.com/questions/2402/what-exact...
| AzzieElbab wrote:
| I actually like all things crypto, but why does this tech have to
| suck so much
| omginternets wrote:
| Why is it a good thing to make ETH deflationary? Don't you want
| people to spend it?
| tom_mellior wrote:
| People spend "deflationary" money all the time. Proof: The
| device you typed your post on cost more when you bought it than
| it would cost now. This has been the case for many things,
| including all electronics, for _many decades_.
| chucknthem wrote:
| Reminds me of the bitcoin cash fork and segwit drama in 2017.
| jaimehrubiks wrote:
| Regardless of the current issues with the updates, gas prices,
| different opinions on the community, devs vs miners vs users...
|
| Am I the only one who thinks people underestimate Ethereum and
| its EVM invention? In 2013 this guy (who I think is a visionary)
| wrote a document with a proposal that led to the creation of a
| world-wide turing-complete distributed computer. And still,
| people are just starting to realize its potential. This month a
| layer-2 solution called optimism will launch a virtual machine
| called OVM (optimism vm) on top of ethereum smart contracts that
| can solve most of the current scalability issues (and there are
| other solutions being tested in parallel: zkrollups...). We are
| also starting to realize the potential of Dex and Defi
| (distributed exchanges and finance), DAOs (distributed
| organizations), NFT (non-fungible tokens) and a bunch of things
| more that 7 years after are appearing out of thin air. So even if
| Ethereum wasn't updated at all (although, we probably all agree
| that PoW is not environmental friendly and should be replaced
| with a better alternative: PoS) it could still thrive in the long
| term thanks to its most fundamental design choices (turing-
| complete...). I am truly amazed by this technology and Vitalik. I
| wish I knew a little bit more of the underlying fundamentals.
| What do you think?
| numbsafari wrote:
| Never underestimate the efficiency with which money launderers
| and organized crime are able to innovate and adapt.
| rawtxapp wrote:
| As someone who uses both BTC and ETH and who likes both, this is
| one of the reason why people prefer Bitcoin over Ethereum.
|
| The reality is that the energy used to secure the Bitcoin
| blockchain (or the energy "wasted" according to many here) is
| important and makes a 51% attack prohibitively costly.
|
| While Vitalik coming with this potential solution is great, the
| reverse of that coin is that the developers have very significant
| control on the blockchain which is far from ideal.
| undefined1 wrote:
| is this also an issue with Ethereum competitors like Cardano?
| DennisP wrote:
| Developers can't do anything the users don't want. They can't
| make people adopt the new software. The miners are losing here
| because everybody else in the ecosystem wants proof-of-stake
| and 1559, including users, ETH holders, and app developers.
| chillacy wrote:
| Absolutely, all the stuff built on ETH (defi, automated
| exchanges, nfts) can't truly take off when gas fees can cost
| 20-80 USD per action. There's already a blockchain that acts
| as a store of value, the world doesn't need a second bitcoin.
| bpodgursky wrote:
| The 51% attack here is only because PoW hasn't been completely
| eliminated yet... once ETH is on PoS, this attack won't be
| possible.
| AaronFriel wrote:
| > There are a wide variety of benefits to this proposal, such as
| potentially making Ethereum deflationary
|
| Interesting that this is framed as a benefit.
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