"You are spamming the HN comments and didn't read links, therefore your question is invalid, because of who asked it" is ad hominem.
It's easy enough not to reply. No need to get an attitude about it.
It's easy enough not to reply. No need to get an attitude about it.
> Is it incorrect to say that ethereum is now entirely centralized with some extra steps?
> Like, you have this proof of stake thing, but the only reason it works is because there's just a small number of validators, which is just going to be the ethereum foundation and friends.
I know Cunningham's Law is a valid discussion strategy, but the topics of cryptocurrency on HN already tends to attract enough flamewars and misinformation as it is.
There's nothing here that was done in bad faith and I should not need to defend myself for asking a question in a tech forum. Assuming I'm not asking in good faith is bad faith.
The reason I asked was a description pasted a short while ago:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32535409
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32535912
Which included this line:
> Slashing is not meant to profitable, and the whistleblower reward is quite small. We don't need a million slashers, in fact, we could operate with just one... expect the Eth Foundation to run them, among other large players who can spare the resources.
Which sure sounds like a decentralized process that is ultimately just centralized around the ETH foundation at the end of the day.
Honestly I've learned a lot from the responses here. And I think people who assumed I was doing anything other than just asking questions because the idea I was asking about offended them are asshole. So yeah. Go pound sand.
The validators need to be decentralized (i.e. prevent "harmful collusion"), but the slashers don't need to be in the same way (as long as the validators are).
It is not the case that only the ETH foundation can slash, which was the crux of my original question.
The fundamental misunderstanding people seem to be having is that slashers show objective proof of bad events. That's accurate. But validators are still free to agree or disagree with that objective proof of bad events. If you can create a means to prevent consensus on slashing for your overtly malicious behavior, your stake is only at risk if the entire community agrees to fork, which is probable for huge malicious behaviors but I'm not convinced is true for smaller things or circumstances where large actors have a vested interest in preferring the original chain.