Ethereum Foundation Confirms September Dates for the Merge (theblock.co) 33
Ethereum's developers have officially confirmed September 6 as the date for Ethereum's long-anticipated transition from proof of work to proof of stake, known as The Merge. From a report: "Following years of hard work, Ethereum's proof-of-stake upgrade is finally here!" the Ethereum Foundation wrote in a blog post on Wednesday. "The successful upgrade of all public testnets is now complete, and The Merge has been scheduled for the Ethereum mainnet." The Merge will be split into two upgrades, called Bellatrix and Paris. Bellatrix is timed to occur at 11:34 AM UTC on September 6 and Paris will be triggered sometime between September 10 and September 20, according to the blog post. Proof of stake relies on validators instead of miners. Instead of expending lots of computing power, like proof-of-work miners do, proof-of-stake validators lock up sums of money to prove their trustworthiness to the network. The switch has been a long-held goal for Ethereum's developers. In the final testing step, the Goerli testnet successfully merged on August 10.
So, to sum up... those who have... get more (Score:2, Insightful)
So, to summarize the change, from what I know, instead of using computers or ASICs to mine, those who have ETH will get more delivered to them on a silver platter.
Sure doesn't sound like a pyramid scheme to me...
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So, to summarize the change, from what I know, instead of using computers or ASICs to mine, those who have ETH will get more delivered to them on a silver platter.
Mining rigs and electricity all cost money. It was always turtles all the way down, it's just more obvious now.
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It'll all come crashing down as soon as it's useless for speculation.
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You forgot: the small-time miners that, in aggregate, make up a good chunk of the computing power of the ETH network now have no incentive to participate, so the given date is when a chunk of processing capability will vanish into thin air.
Some probably already has, as they know they won't be able to finish another minimum fraction of an ETH before the date, so they're already shutting off.
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Well, proof of stake "burns" the ETH you use, so you don't want too much.
Basically if you want to approve the block, you put up some ETH to pay for it. That ETH is burned and you lose it.
You get reimbursed by all the transaction fees that got paid into that block, though. So you want to bid "enough"
Last 1 to list their GPUs on eBay is a rotten egg! (Score:3)
And so begins the dumping of used mining GPUs on the second hand market...
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Or miners move to the next crypto on the list of having good GPU mining potential and functional existing network.
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In the past, they've moved on to mining something else. Every altcoin that exists today is a result of someone who missed the boat on Bitcoin, so they decided to build their own damn boat.
Re:What happens to the proof-of-work folks? (Score:4, Informative)
so they decided to build their own damn boat.
in fact, forget the boat
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They put up the minimum stake and continue mining? The minimum stake is like $70k - if they're running an operation that requires it's own fucking power plant, I'm pretty sure they can pony that up.
It's dead, Jim (Score:2)
Please quit beating that poor horse.
Re:It's dead, Jim (Score:4, Insightful)
What worries me is that this has all the hallmarks of the 1920s and 2008 crashes. Rampant speculation on things that don't actually have any real value. We have several of but too big to fail Banks and institutions investing heavily and we've already shown they can gamble and we will cover their losses because if we don't they can and will hold us hostage with our jobs and our economy.
It's kind of a bizarre Stockholm syndrome we've got going where the ultra wealthy institutions are holding us hostage and we're letting them because we bought into prosperity Gospel
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It's kind of a bizarre Stockholm syndrome we've got going where the ultra wealthy institutions are holding us hostage and we're letting them because we bought into prosperity Gospel
Wow, you managed to tie in the Stock Market with the Stockholm syndrome. Who would have thought?
What stops... (Score:2)
What stops someone from forking from ethereum just prior to this switch and saying, "don't really feel like giving up all the investments into the mining rigs we build out" and keeping their "capital"/momentum/ponzi scheme going in this new fork?
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> What stops someone from forking from ethereum just prior to this switch and saying, "don't really feel like giving up all the investments into the mining rigs we build out" and keeping their "capital"/momentum/ponzi scheme going in this new fork?
It's already in the works by many of the miners.
Belief in centralized authority is what stops that from being effective for this 'decentralized' cryptocurrency'. Or so the developers/stakers hope.
Re:What stops... (Score:5, Interesting)
Crypto is speedrunning the last 120 years of banking history and getting close to the point of a massive crash that's going to take themselves and us down with them. The only question is, is our government functional enough to regulate and prevent that crash from bleeding into our daily lives and our jobs and savings. Even among the people who don't put money in crypto.
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Thank you for the insight.
So the miners have no recourse or way to prevent this? Even though they (the miners) prop up the system, the system (early adopters) has control over the the whole thing due to holding all the money.
This new scheme sounds like it only solidifies the early adopters control. Why would anyone want this? Besides the eco-bs argument?
They're looking forward to it (Score:2)
The people who get screwed are the marks putting money into the system at the bottom of they pyramid. The structure of most exchanges means that when the crash comes the folks at the top will be able to pull out any real money while they folks at the bottom are left holding worthless script.
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How many crypto currencies have you heard of? You realise there's over 20000 different kinds in "circulation" right?
Forking something is utterly meaningless if no one gives a crap about it. Ever wonder why Bitcoin Cash is worth 0.8% of an actual bitcoin despite forking bitcoin with all wallets and their "value" intact? Or maybe you're more of a Bitcoin Gold man with a 0.2% of the value of Bitcoin.
money never sleeps (Score:2)
just in time for the winter!
Scheduled by whom? (Score:1)
I thought this thing was supposed to be decentralized. Did every network participant agree to this update at this time? And what was that process like?
Or maybe... not so decentralized.
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Well, not all cryptocurrencies are decentralized. Bitcoin and Etherium are though. Any change has to be approved by a majority of the miners. So, like, half a dozen people at least. And some of those probably don't know each other.
Nvidia stock price - wave bye bye (Score:2)
The price of Nvidia stock in Jan 2016 was about $6/share - this was the beginning of the ETH mining boom.
most likely fail Hoovey test (Score:1)