Hetzner bans running Ethereum PoS nodes
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If you could convince the CEO that you were not a fraudster, I'm sure the 'no crypto' policy is flexible.
I used to work in the porn industry writing software (no, not in front of the camera). Years ago, we were using a web analytics tool that got bought by a Mormon company. We were one of their largest customers. We were told we couldn't use the software any more. This is what we are facing here.
This has been the case for decades. It used to be "no public IRC, no torrents" or "no adult content". Now it just shifted to crypto. Providers always had terms of service defining which applications are acceptable and which aren't.
Social credit and trust isn't necessary when exchanging digital cash (or physical cash) like it is when exchanging credit.
And irreversible transactions sound good until it's your stolen bitcoin used to pay Hetzner...
BTC becomes a reliable store of value as you're no longer concerned with the daily price changes, only your collateralization ratio.
Kind of like what's happened to some Chinese citizens who planned to protest a bank, and had their health codes go red so they could no longer travel. https://www.reuters.com/world/china/china-bank-protest-stopp...
I certainly don't expect credit cards, and the consumer protection they provide, to go away. But I do think it is good that there always be irrevocable foundation (cash and digital cash) that you can fall back on if the institutions in charge end up becoming abusive. That might not be something you and I have to worry about today, but there's no guarantee that the people with the power tomorrow will be as honorable as those today.
If you don’t live in CA you’re not a resident and thus not obligated to file, one would assume, and if they lifted the money out of a bank account in another state… what are you even supposed to do?
You'd think that if you move out of state or even the country... but apparently, as I've found out now, the FTB is pretty hardcore about these things. You have to file 0 on California tax returns even after you leave the state.
I had only kept the account open so that I could xfer money oversees more easily as there was a citibank branch in Vietnam (where I moved) that allowed for free ~24 hour xfers. I kept a minimal amount of funds in there to avoid fees. Luckily, I use another bank primarily and the FTB didn't go after that account, otherwise, I'd be broke and unable to pay my bills.
So yea, it definitely has me on edge now about banks in general. I was already pro-crypto and now I'm only more so. Too many people feel it isn't their problem... until it is.
With reversible transactions, human judgement enters into it. Human judgement is imperfect and corruptible, but it's better than rigid rules that can't be changed even in emergencies or other unusual situations that their makers didn't foresee (or just didn't care about).
Humans can come to an agreement that a mistake was made, and the receiver of the transaction can voluntarily do a counter transaction. This is exactly what happens with physical cash. You can't reverse a cash transaction without the receiver's consent, or without violently coercing the receiver to return it.
What you're upset about is that we can't come to a human agreement to go back and change history to undo our mistakes. Systems like bitcoin require a roll forward to correct things, and never allow unilateral roll backs.
https://twitter.com/Hetzner_Online/status/156308356197598413...
> Using our products for any application related to mining, even remotely related, is not permitted. This includes Ethereum. It includes proof of stake and proof of work and related applications. It includes trading. It is true for all of our products, except colocation. Even if you just run one node, we consider it a violation of our ToS.
That context just shows the title is incorrect, because it's not specifically about Ethereum, and not specifically about PoS. It includes those, but also includes any other cryptocurrencies, and any other proof-of-X methods.
https://twitter.com/maggielove_/status/1562915484659601409
Regardless, talking about the title of the post is bike shedding. Let's move on.
I mean at some point, isn't everything "cryptocurrency related"? I have the "openssl" package installed on lots of servers, that probably has most of the cryptographic functions needed to fulfill some cryptocurrency functions I imagine.
(Yes, it doesn’t require nearly as much power as proof of work, but it obviously consumes power.)
With that same reason, they should ban their customers from running any sort of stress-tests as well, as that'll consume more power than just assuming your web server can handle the load.
PoS doesn't work in the same way...
Plus what others said... the price of power is factored into their end user pricing.
Even if...hell you pay for it! Really none of their business if it's not illegal.
This is capitalism, Hetzner does not want cryptocurrency stuff on their servers, that's fine. Lots of other providers do not want chat applications, filehosting and whatnot as it stresses their systems more than usual. That's fine, there's a place for everybody.
Crypto though? Nah. Good on Hetzner for this. I appreciate their decision.
By the time we get that far on the slope, it'll be too late for your support to help. That's the whole premise of slippery slopes.
First they came for the cryptocurrency users, and I did not speak out—Because I was not a cryptocurrency user.
...
Then they came for me—and there was no one left to speak for me.
People really need to chill out with regards to that ponzi scheme.
"Each of my bank accounts were temporarily frozen because there was so much cash flowing through them that the banks thought I was laundering money."
People are free to complain. And it makes sense, if people chose Hetzner it's because there was something they liked over the other providers. Now they'll have to move to another provider they like less.
And even if you don't care about crypto, I don't want to live in a world where all the big cloud providers have a long list of software you can or can't run. It's important to harshly criticize these things before they become commonplace and they affect you in some other way.
Maybe it is time for government to step in and even though these companies are private, of it becomes a system wide problem they need to force them to host such legal content. Especially companies that want to be considered transparent carriers such as the phone company.
For example requiring all business to accept cash as payment.
What is the point of having laws of industry in the end decides what is legal?
This is often because of legal grey areas, and companies would rather ban things than risk any legal or financial liability.
Or companies may ban things that are heavily regulated simply because the cost and difficulty of following the regulations. (This is a common issue for adult services, since there are requirements around human trafficking and child exploitation.)
A lot of crypto is associated with illegal activities (e.g. money laundering, ransomware), and uses a lot of energy.
Anyone who does business internationally may need to satisfy the lowest common denominator of regulations.
Governments or major customers also apply pressure.
Now you’re saying you need the government to step in because some middling IT company doesn’t want to play with you?
Also, if someone is storing a billion dollars of cryptocoins in one of Hetzners servers, who should pay for the extra security guards, staff vetting, etc?
[1] https://ethernodes.org/networkType/Hosting
[2] https://ethernodes.org/network-types
[3] https://twitter.com/hashtag/stakefromhome
Edit: Clarified hosted vs residential
Why do you expect that? People that use Hetzner usually pick it because it's very cheap. I don't see many moving to AWS, which is very expensive. They'll probably move to OVH, maybe Digital Ocean or Linode or other.
It seems that the centralization will get worse with the move to PoS in both cases. It doesn't matter what the Ethereum maximalists / supports or even the Ethereum foundation says otherwise at this point.
On the bright side, if AWS has a large outage or simply shut down any nodes running validators, all of the validator operators would need to set up somewhere else quickly to avoid large inactivity leaks (which grow in relation to the number of offline nodes). The worst outcome would be that people would move from AWS to Azure and simply move the problem elsewhere, but ideally it will solve itself as validators get penalized more for supporting centralization of certain aspects of the protocol.
The protocol has a built-in mechanic to dissuade centralization that hasn’t had an impact yet since there hasn’t been a large-scale outage affecting a single host. Once that happens, people will get a bit more cautious.
My experience running uptime sensitive stuff there (on cloud and baremetal) has been suboptimal.