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0 pointseverfree5y ago0 comments

This property is called Weak Subjectivity and is indeed a compromise that PoS makes over PoW. However, in practice, the trust assumptions aren't much higher than when you, say, download node software from a source that you trust.

> I do not feel I can trust the majority to be correct every minute or every day forever.

With weak subjectivity, you only have to trust them to be correct on a timeframe of every few months. If consensus is actually broken somehow over such a long period of time, there will be big headlines about it and you'll be able to configure your node accordingly.

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DickingAround5y ago· 1 in thread

How do you know who to trust under Weak Subjectivity? It amounts to saying "I'm pretty sure we'll be able to google it and figure it out". But that then relies on these 3rd party systems to be able to identify who to trust. How can you really know who to trust for a protocol that's supposed to be distributed and ownerless. If the US turned into Russia-level of corruption, we essentially have to trust the owners of ETH to successfully flee to somewhere that we can protect them. What if they die or go bankrupt and no one agrees on who owns ETH?

If the answer is 'we'll trust the majority of users'. How do you know who that majority users are? Is that literally people the hold a lot of the ETH gas? So I know who has ETH based on what software I download and I download software based on who has ETH? And I know I'm in the right cycle of that form because I googled it and found an 'authority'? Risky.

everfreeOP5y ago

I think you're jumping to the "risky" conclusion a bit prematurely.

> What if they die or go bankrupt and no one agrees on who owns ETH?

By "owner", do you mean the core developers who own the protocol repositories on github, or do you mean the client software teams who own the software repositories, or the individuals and exchanges who run the nodes and economic services, or the stakers producing blocks, or someone else?

If two reputable factions have a simultaneous claim to be the protocol stewards of the "real ETH", the ETH currency will fork and market forces will decide who the "true" owners are by valuing each side of the fork properly. We've already seen something similar to this with Ethereum vs Ethereum Classic, and with Bitcoin vs Bitcoin Cash.

So we don't need to trust any majority of users like you said, you get to personally choose what fork of the software you want to transact on, based on what version of the client software you personally see as legitimate, and download and run.

> So I know who has ETH based on what software I download and I download software based on who has ETH? And I know I'm in the right cycle of that form because I googled it and found an 'authority'? Risky.

Every cryptocurrency has a cycle of that form, even PoW cryptocurrencies. You could take "the chain with the most accumulated work", but that's not enough, because what you really need is the chain with the most accumulated work that also follows the protocol rules, with the protocol rules being based on which software you choose to download. You always need to trust someone to give you the software, unless you download the source code, personally audit every line of it to understand how it affects the behavior of the protocol's consensus, and compile it yourself.

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