COINBASE for Crypto has come

Clinamenic

Clinamenic

Binary & Tweed
Yeah I can see where some of the loudest voices in the space are full of themselves, to some degree. I kinda get that vibe from Bankless.

But yeah for anyone who isn't clear, web3 just means the internet with all the features enabled by distributed ledger technologies like blockchain. Just a significant shift in the nature of the protocol stack, it seems.
 
Clinamenic

Clinamenic

Binary & Tweed
The power consumption is a serious issue for some blockchains, as far as I can tell, but there is also evidence that mere changes to the code can lower energy costs by orders of magnitude. Case by case thing, as usual.
 
Clinamenic

Clinamenic

Binary & Tweed
yyaldrin said:

Proof of stake is a scam and the people promoting it are scammers

Blog.
yanmaani.github.io yanmaani.github.io

what do you make of this @Clinamenic? it's too difficult for me to understand but it's written in your language
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In principle yanmaani makes a valid point, as far as I know, but I'm not sure it holds up, in light of how these protocols work 99% of the time.

Not familiar with enough with consensus mechanisms in general, or proof-of-stake (PoS) in particular, to assess how signifiant the risk is that is pointed out here.

Yanmaani seems to be arguing that if a block validator has nothing at stake (I.e. no sunk costs for mining, nor any assets staked), they can act in ways that are dangerous to the network, without being punished. I.e. they can support false blocks, arguably the blockchain equivalent of counterfeiting.

It's my understanding that several variants of PoS exist, so generalizing may be misguided. I'm pretty sure the eventual PoS protocol for Ethereum 2.0 will require block validators to have 32 ETH / ~$120,000 current market value (I think, something large anyway), in order to "choose" the correct blocks to be added to the ledger's history. And it may likely even be weighted in favor of those staking more, but I don't know.

I'm not convinced that people with nothing at stake can really exert a serious influence over the network, but again I'm not familiar enough with PoS to be more certain. It also depends on the particular PoS network in question. Maybe @suspended or @toko or @polystyle could correct me if I'm wrong.

Anyway, concluding from this alleged system flaw, Yanmaani asks:

If advocates of this supposedly secure scheme know about this, but neglect to tell anyone - in public, that is, not in obscure blog posts - are they committing fraud, malpractice, or merely lying by omission?
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Here he's talking about Bitcoin and the current version of Ethereum, both proof-of-work (PoW).

In PoW, we needn’t worry about “the network” being wrong about anything. As long as we’re decently connected, and verifying everything, we know we’re on the right track. We are assured that everyone else will eventually fall in line. Since they’re running the same software, how could they not?
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But PoW is also the super energy-intensive protocol that @sufi just posted about. But here again, there may be variants of PoW that are more efficient that I am unaware of, but to my knowledge they are generally way more energy-intensive than other consensus mechanisms.

Also interesting, although I'm not sure I agree:

Is there any replacement for proof of work?​

I don’t know if we will ever replace proof of work. Probably, in ten years they might have something. To fit the security model of Bitcoin, it must have the following desiderata:

  1. Costly - mining a block must create a sunk cost roughly equivalent to the block reward
  2. Irreversible - these costs must arise in the real-world, from processes that are not cheaply reversible in the short term
  3. Self-certifying - it must be possible to validate solely within computer software, without reference to anything else
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Clinamenic

Clinamenic

Binary & Tweed
mining a block must create a sunk cost roughly equivalent to the block reward
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But if this is the case, i.e. if there is no profit, why would people bother? It would go against the whole notion of incentivizing node operators to perpetuate the system, which is the central function of cryptocurrency.
 
Clinamenic

Clinamenic

Binary & Tweed
But these are the sort of criticisms that are really important. Troubleshooting the code, running through the possible failures or catastrophic contingencies, rather than just monolithically calling crypto a scam without any understanding of cryptography, computer science, or how our financial systems have always operated.

In this sense the scam critique may be similar to the environmental critique: blockchain is new and the impact its making is observable and quantifiable and largely open-source, whereas the impact being made by the more entrenched practices and institutions is taken for granted, largely because it is closed-source.

So there could be a valid, unresolved technical concern across PoS generally, but I'm not yet familiar enough with these things to deny or confirm such a concern.
 
luka

luka

Well-known member
craner said:
If you can't then they probably can't either, which means they're financial advisers. If you can't, and they can, it means they're crooks.
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didnt you have a friend from Tawian getting you to play the stock market recently
 
craner

craner

Beast of Burden
5 years ago, I got bored after 2 days, also he and his mate lost all their money on some dud speculation on a mining prospect in central Africa a couple of months later.
 
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