Ethereum GPU mining?

[IntelUser2000]

Sadly, I think that would have significantly reduced Ethereum's uptake. Mining, in its infancy, was about running 1-3 dGPUs and having tune/tweak contests with other forum warriors to see who could mine out the most magic Internet money.

Yea I very much agree with this. I'm in the dapp space just because I had Ethereum from mining. What other motivation would be there for me to be here otherwise?

I think, in theory PoS from the beginning could have resulted in the same thing, but there are doubts in my mind about that. 8% as a stake is not very exciting or sounds as much compared to seeing your crypto bank account increasing day by day with PoW mining.

Staking also brings additional issues to be resolved like security. Right now with crypto mining its quite easy to keep your coins secure. How can that be guaranteed with PoS? You have a fraction of Eth stored in mining pools. Equivalent PoS pools would have 10-20x the amount of Ethereum making them a far tastier target.

 

[Accord99]

Staking also brings additional issues to be resolved like security. Right now with crypto mining its quite easy to keep your coins secure. How can that be guaranteed with PoS? You have a fraction of Eth stored in mining pools. Equivalent PoS pools would have 10-20x the amount of Ethereum making them a far tastier target.

Most likely you'll be able to setup staking by yourself, as long as you have enough coins to meet the minimum amount. You would only need to use a staking pool if you don't have enough coins and/or want somebody else to handle the setup and uptime.

As an example, with Dash you can setup a master node yourself using commands through the Dash wallet. The master node can be setup on another computer but the coins will remain tied to your wallet. Somebody hacking into the separate master node computer cannot access your coins. But with the coin cost of a Dash master node so high, many people would only be able to take part if they pooled their coins together.

 

[DrMrLordX]

Equivalent PoS pools would have 10-20x the amount of Ethereum making them a far tastier target.

That is going to be a problem. Last time I did any reading on the subject, they were looking at minimum stakes of 32 ETH. That's far more than the cost of a basic mining computer in mid 2016 when I got into the game. And then there's that uptime thing . . .

Most likely you'll be able to setup staking by yourself, as long as you have enough coins to meet the minimum amount. You would only need to use a staking pool if you don't have enough coins and/or want somebody else to handle the setup and uptime.

Outside of the costs involved (32 ETH? Or has the EF said anything different?), I would be cautious about exactly what losing power would entail. It might be easier enough to just set up an AWS instance and let that handle staking instead of trying to do it at home on a laptop plugged into the wall with a cell connection in case the Internet landline goes down.

 

[thilanliyan]

That is going to be a problem. Last time I did any reading on the subject, they were looking at minimum stakes of 32 ETH. That's far more than the cost of a basic mining computer in mid 2016 when I got into the game. And then there's that uptime thing . . .

Outside of the costs involved (32 ETH? Or has the EF said anything different?), I would be cautious about exactly what losing power would entail. It might be easier enough to just set up an AWS instance and let that handle staking instead of trying to do it at home on a laptop plugged into the wall with a cell connection in case the Internet landline goes down.

I think it's still 32 Eth. Yeah the slashing due to downtime is what has me concerned about doing my own node. If I didn't have to worry about that I would do one for sure.

I'm not so confident in staking via pools....they can get hacked and will become massive targets once people start using them for PoS. I'd rather do it myself...got no one to blame but myself then if something goes wrong.

 

[Arkaign]

As someone who only does Crypto research a few hours a year to keep up with major stuff, this sounds .. unfocused at best.

https://www.coindesk.com/at-blockchain-week-maturity-is-the-motto-as-ethereum-orgs-push-toward-2-0

Any Eth gurus out there that can cypher the PR speak into any real info to be gleaned here?

Blockchain Week

 

[DrMrLordX]

@Arkaign

Looks like the EF can't handle full-time development of the Ethereum spec, so they're farming it out to third parties, which they can do since it's all open source anyway.

Here's the actual meat from Buterin:

https://ethresear.ch/t/proposed-further-simplifications-abstraction-for-phase-2/5445

Looks like Vitalik intends to continue his work on the Ethereum blockchain, but the rest of the EF is either running out of money or getting involved in for-profit enterprises like ConsenSys (Lubin). The EF is trying to make nice with them to get them to help finish out the spec.

 

[Arkaign]

Is this herding cats or is there a solid consensus being agreed to on direction and funding?

 

[DrMrLordX]

Is this herding cats or is there a solid consensus being agreed to on direction and funding?

I don't really know. It's really hard to figure out what the EF is actually up to since they've made so little progress compared to where they were supposed to be by this point according to plans released three years ago when Ethereum started going nuts. We should have had at least two PoS revisions by now. You can dig through proposals and technical papers from Buterin if you like. Little has been implemented outside of Constantinople, which is a thing but it was a late thing:

https://coinswitch.co/news/ethereum-hard-fork-jan-19-know-everything-about-3-upcoming-eth-hard-forks

Looks like PoS is finally coming in late June:

https://www.coindesk.com/code-for-ethereums-proof-of-stake-blockchain-to-be-finalized-next-month

We'll see if they hit their milestones, and what that all entails.

 

[VirtualLarry]

Does that mean that I won't be making $ mining ETH for people with NH? Need ETH for staking? Should I just go out and buy some and keep it in my exchange account? Will it stack from there? Or do I need to run a "node" myself? If it earns ETH as it goes along for staking, that might be a worth-while investment, no?

 

[DrMrLordX]

Does that mean that I won't be making $ mining ETH for people with NH? Need ETH for staking? Should I just go out and buy some and keep it in my exchange account? Will it stack from there? Or do I need to run a "node" myself? If it earns ETH as it goes along for staking, that might be a worth-while investment, no?

Depends on which PoS model they use for Casper. Friendly Finality Gadget (FFG) was the hybrid PoS/PoW system that was supposed to maybe kinda sorta go in earlier this year, but I think they scrapped it for some reason. Now everything seems to be up in the air.

According to the last time I did research into PoS models, it looks like you'll need a minimum of 32 ETH to stake, and you'll need one always-on connection to do so. Unless you go through a staking pool - if those even emerge. I don't think you can lose your stake, but you may not earn anything if you're unlucky (or if your always-on connection dies). Over time, you'll earn something, just like solo mining. It'll require some patience.

I've heard rewards will be anywhere from 3-7%, with the smart money now looking closer to 3%. Not sure if you can "compound" the earnings by immediately adding what you earn to your stake. We'll have to see the smart contracts to see if that's possible.

Rated against real-world investments, 3% doesn't seem that great unless ETH continues to be a deflationary currency. The idea back in 2016 when I first heard about PoS is that PoS would introduce an additional scarcity element, causing a lot of ETH to be sidelined by staking. Remember that ETH still has to be paid to carry out transactions on the blockchain. The more ETH gets staked, the more artificial demand there is. Actually rolling out PoS could drive the price up by quite a bit. That's one of the many reasons why I put money down on it years ago.

Ethereum would probably be in a much better place today had PoS gone online as early as it could have.

 

[IntelUser2000]

Ethereum 2.0 Phase 0 is coming in January 3, 2020. 2.0 is split into seven phases, and is not a full PoS implementation, but a Hybrid PoW/PoS one. Block reward reduction said to be reduced to 0.6 eth by one source, but do not take this number to heart. Casper FFG.

Phase 1 is where sharding will be implemented, but starting with Phase 0 staking will be possible. Two versions of eth will exist in 2.0. 32 eth to stake.

Ethereum 3.0 is the full PoS phase, or Casper CBC.

https://docs.ethhub.io/ethereum-roadmap/ethereum-2.0/eth-2.0-phases/
https://github.com/ethereum/wiki/wiki/Sharding-roadmap#phase-3-light-client-state-protocol

I speculated at one point that with the network as big as Ethereum, changing to PoS wouldn't be easy. Now we know they have to go through multiple phases. Let's just say that 3.0, or full PoS will not happen anytime soon.

 

[reb0rn]

They don`t have tech, POS pure is not safe nor decentralized, other coins already have sharding working and 2nd layer

ETH is as intel in 2015-2019... done nothing then promote vapor ware

PS: I expect same person to down vote me as he promote broken projects

 

[ozzy702]

They don`t have tech, POS pure is not safe nor decentralized, other coins already have sharding working and 2nd layer

ETH is as intel in 2015-2019... done nothing then promote vapor ware

PS: I expect same person to down vote me as he promote broken projects

To be fair, pretty much all your posts have been down voted so... I may as well join in. You're being hyper-critical of Ethereum and downplaying development while completely overstating what other projects have done. 2020-2021 will be glorious for ETH and BTC.

 

[reb0rn]

I speak my mind, ETH was ICO presale scam from start with zero legality or transparency, its still shame what marketing hype can do with failed hard forked coin for personal gain (The DAO debacle)

With the broken POS, ETH will slowly die, as they did NONE work in past 2 years, even now what was promised there is no testnet nor whitepaper but again more promises

There are dozen of more serious and fair projects, but no ppl look only on marketing side and project to pump price (all tokens on ETH are scam and worthless)

For your info there are working three sharding blockchains already one is zilliqa (pow) and the other is one from 2018 (pow also) that is keep under the hood + one more testnet on POS
ETH is working on other ppl tech and promises, whats even worst for 2 years they produced nothing!
Only reason hype is here is bagholders with worthless tokens, trashing anyone that thinks for himself

crypto himself will survive, ETH was be just one more scam try

 

[DrMrLordX]

I speak my mind,

Are you sure? Seems like you're mindless to me. It's also highly-predictable and sketchy that you're still in this thread trolling people. Immediately after @IntelUser2000 posts useful information, here you are, posting empty rants.

Ethereum is behind their own schedule, though I know of no other project that has "sharding working". We don't have a major public blockchain running millions of txs/second with full decentralization. LN is not the solution we're looking for here.

@IntelUser2000

Thanks for the update. It is interesting that they've swung back to a hybrid solution. They should have been able to implement FFG by now! At least they have a plan moving forward without specifically having to bring a private party in to do work for them (and potentially taint the entire process).

 

[reb0rn]

So where is the testnet if release date is jan 2020.... I am atm tracking at least 50+ projects many of them new ones, and each one have 1+ testnet for a far simpler and troublesome blockchain
You know sharding already is in mainnet blockchains?
POS is not secure, only secure POS is 100% centralized one as EOS (even that is debatable if it secure)

ETH is only piling popular buzzwords as sharding, POS, their casper solution with zero results all that without testnet?

if ppl are interested by new projects that deliver something new there is, nyzo (proof of diversity), TMA (first pow sharding network from 2018), even zilliqa POW sharding with smart contracts (even its also scam ICO too)

 

[IntelUser2000]

Thanks for the update. It is interesting that they've swung back to a hybrid solution. They should have been able to implement FFG by now!

At least they have a solid plan now. The original plans for FFG were most like pie in the sky dreams. Software development usually comes with significant delays. They struggled with Constantinople, something that was much simpler.

Plus I think when anything gets big enough it starts getting political and you start getting split into factions with their own agendas. With Constantinople, there were people complaining about ASIC miners killing GPU miners and reduction of rewards will make it even worse. Prominent developers like OhGodItsaGirl pushed for anti-ASIC algorithms such as ProgPOW to be on the mainnet.

Update: In the meantime, plans still exist for another hard fork in October called Istanbul. Recently two EIPs have been approved.

So it looks like they are going at it in parallel? Perhaps it'll be better executed now.

A project called Alternaeth also wants to implement a sister chain to smooth transition.

in interview that he hopes the network will act as “a sister chain” to ethereum validating ideas and proof-of-concepts before adoption on the main chain.

“For ethereum to be sound money, it needs to be very conservative in making changes,” said Hancock. “For ethereum to keep pace with competition it needs to keep making changes. These two ideas are in tension as it is difficult to do both well.”

The second quote explains the reason for the apparent slowness of the dev team to change the network.

 

[DrMrLordX]

I am atm tracking at least 50+ projects many of them new ones

You know sharding already is in mainnet blockchains?

So why aren't you posting anything positive about those projects instead of simply trashing Ethereum? You post like someone trying to short ETH.

if ppl are interested by new projects that deliver something new there is, nyzo (proof of diversity), TMA (first pow sharding network from 2018), even zilliqa POW sharding with smart contracts (even its also scam ICO too)

Now we are getting somewhere. Though I am wary of Zilliqa, and honestly this is a mining thread, so if those projects do not feature mining then we are perhaps getting off-topic.

At least they have a solid plan now.

The plan up through Constantinople was solid. Seems like they're moving on from that (finally).

They struggled with Constantinople, something that was much simpler.

I'm kind of wondering if the EF relied too much on outside FOSS developers filling in the gaps.

Plus I think when anything gets big enough it starts getting political and you start getting split into factions with their own agendas.

That is undoubtedly true. Ethereum is prone to the same bickering that we've seen in the Bitcoin world. Fortunately it hasn't been quite so bad.

Update:

In the meantime, plans still exist for another hard fork in October called Istanbul.

Wasn't that already the next step from Constantinople anyway? Didn't think that was new . . . just delayed.

A project called Alternaeth also wants to implement a sister chain to smooth transition.

What advantage is there to that versus the testnet?

The second quote explains the reason for the apparent slowness of the dev team to change the network.

That's a nicer way of saying, "People are already making a lot of money on Ethereum. Why rock the boat?". Obviously you need to keep rocking the boat to make it worth anything at all (Ethereum is, effectively, still not functional). Personally I think there is far too much complacence. Too much aversity to risk after the DAO hack.

 

[IntelUser2000]

Wasn't that already the next step from Constantinople anyway? Didn't think that was new . . . just delayed.

Yes, but I expected it to delay Ethereum 2.0. At least we know it has some sort of a parallel development. Deploying Eth 2.0 Beacon chain 3 month after is not possible otherwise.

What advantage is there to that versus the testnet?

Hmm. I didn't think of it that way. Yes, I still could think of the advantages. Testnet is done by the core team, and this one is by another one. Teams tend to work in a similar mental fashion. Different teams will have different results. Also the article about it talks other motives for doing it. You should skim through it at least.

Personally I think there is far too much complacence. Too much aversity to risk after the DAO hack.

Ok, but this is simply reality. Just like bigger cars(trucks) and bigger ships are slow to move. You wouldn't treat penny-stock equivalent in crypto as same as you do with Ethereum would you? The standards expected are not the same. It can't be.

You have a greater crowd, so you have bigger responsibilities. Bigger market also means there are far more unaccounted errors people will find.

 

[Head1985]

Ethereum 2.0 Phase 0 is coming in January 3, 2020. 2.0 is split into six phases, and is not a full PoS implementation, but a Hybrid PoW/PoS one. Block reward reduction said to be reduced to 0.6 eth by one source, but do not take this number to heart. Casper FFG.

Phase 1 is where sharding will be implemented, but starting with Phase 0 staking will be possible. Two versions of eth will exist in 2.0. 32 eth to stake.

Ethereum 3.0 is the full PoS phase, or Casper CBC.

https://docs.ethhub.io/ethereum-roadmap/ethereum-2.0/eth-2.0-phases/
https://github.com/ethereum/wiki/wiki/Sharding-roadmap#phase-3-light-client-state-protocol

I speculated at one point that with the network as big as Ethereum, changing to PoS wouldn't be easy. Now we know they have to go through multiple phases. Let's just say that 3.0, or full PoS will not happen anytime soon.

So what does this mean to GPU mining?

 

[DrMrLordX]

Yes, but I expected it to delay Ethereum 2.0. At least we know it has some sort of a parallel development. Deploying Eth 2.0 Beacon chain 3 month after is not possible otherwise.

Fair enough point. I kind of wonder how many of these efforts are coming from the EF and how many are coming from 3rd parties. As long as the EF is doing more than just rubber-stamping progress, it'll be fine. Reading about Alternaeth shows me that 3rd parties are having more influence than they did three years ago.

Hmm. I didn't think of it that way. Yes, I still could think of the advantages. Testnet is done by the core team, and this one is by another one. Teams tend to work in a similar mental fashion. Different teams will have different results. Also the article about it talks other motives for doing it. You should skim through it at least.

https://www.coindesk.com/alternateth-a-friendly-fork-of-the-ethereum-blockchain

That's what I read on the subject. Interesting. Unlike the testnet, there will be actual PoW work done on the sister chain, and mining rewards will be split between the miners and developers. I wonder if the ETC crowd will try to infect this effort?

So what does this mean to GPU mining?

On the main Ethereum blockchain, it means rewards go down in October or so. Once Casper is finally implemented (ugh), PoW mining is basically over.

Buuuuut now you have Alternaeth which is a "friendly" sister sidechain that will allow mining using a different PoW algorithm (known as ProgPoW). Not sure if it will be profitable since the tokens it generates will have no real function outside of operating what is essentially a massive Ethereum development sidechain.

 

[Feld]

Sounds like Alternaeth would effectively be to Ethereum what Litecoin is to Bitcoin.

 

[DrMrLordX]

Sounds like Alternaeth would effectively be to Ethereum what Litecoin is to Bitcoin.

Sort of. My understanding is that the EF will fold changes to the Alternaeth blockchain into the main Ethereum blockchain if they prove to be useful. Litecoin never did that for Bitcoin.

Also, Alternaeth's reward system seems developer-focused, kind of like the bounties that you get working on Dash.

 

[Head1985]

Bitcoin just gained +2500USD/+22% in past 24hours..WTF in going on?It looks like it will skyrocket to 20-30k in next few days and then again crash???

 

[DrMrLordX]

@Head1985

Looks like there's been a massive amount of USDT printing again. People are getting suspicious.