Souptacular commented 6 years ago

Ethereum Core Devs Meeting Constantinople Session 1 Agenda

Meeting Date/Time: Friday 31 August 2018 at 14:00 UTC

Meeting Duration 1.5 hours

Agenda

Three competing EIPs to delay the difficulty bomb and reduce/maintain the block reward: a. EIP-858 - Delay bomb and reduce block reward to 1 ETH per block. b. EIP-1234 - Delay bomb and reduce block reward to 2 ETH. c. EIP-1295 - Delay bomb, keep rewards to 3 ETH, change other factors such as POW incentive structure.
Constantinople EIPs a. EIP 145: Bitwise shifting instructions in EVM b. EIP 1218: Simpler blockhash refactoring. We are delaying this one until Istanbul. c. EIP 1014: Skinny CREATE2 d. EIP 1052: EXTCODEHASH Opcode e. EIP 1283: Net gas metering for SSTORE without dirty maps
Client Constantinople Updates
Constantinople Testing
(If we have time) Changing PoW algorithm to be ASIC resistant. There is renewed interest from miners to implement ProgPoW.

Different articles/links regarding potential issuance reduction conversation:

stobiewan commented 6 years ago

The decision for the block reward shouldn't be limited to the values in the proposed EIPs. Choosing between one or two eth/block is an unnecessarily coarse resolution. 1.15 eth per block will match bitcoins inflation rate, and exceed it when uncle rewards are considered, so going all the way up to two just because it's a whole number and is one of the options above completely loses sight of the objective.

mohsenghajar commented 6 years ago

For a more uniform and predictable block time, a reduction of difficulty is in order, namely deferrance of the difficulty bomb.

At this point what seems urgent is a measure to support the price and prevent a further fall. Most effective way is reduction of miner rewards. The 1 eth per block sounds the most promising of the three, as it most prudently addresses the urgency at this critical time. I would prefer the issuance to be even smaller, for the same reason. Miners will be winners too. Comrades -- Ethereum can dive really really deep, and not come back for a long time if nothing is done.

Fortunately, the voters have spoken. But I believe the option of capping the supply must also come back on the table. EIP 960

timxor commented 6 years ago

🍿😀

Ramarti commented 6 years ago

Hey guys, dapp dev here. I try to follow all the calls and last one I feel it was pretty "conflicted" at least looking at the comment stream.

Do you have an establish consensus method to reach a decision? Is it a vote? will the decision on point 1 happen in the meeting or at a later point in time or in a different forum? Maybe having clear expectations on how that decision will be made could help.

Anyway just my 2 cents. Much love, keep up the work!

justinjja commented 6 years ago

In addition to the ProgPOW discussion, I would also be interested in a tiny change to the current Ethash algo as a stopgap until ProgPOW can be properly tested. The same type of thing Monero did with Cryptonight to CryptonightV1

nico9111 commented 6 years ago

A vote on this topic was just closed and we have the result. It's a viable vote that was proposed and voted upon. What to do with it? apply it or just ignore it? If we ignore, will the community have faith in the next vote proposal? if miners say this is not representative because no ASIC resistance was introduced, does it excuse the fact that they didn't vote for their favorite EIP (I guess 1295 or 1227)? if they haven't, does that mean they lost their right to complain? questions, questions...

What's for damn sure is that this community urgently needs a defined guidance to properly vote on important issues. Weighted ETH vote on Etherchain is a good start. Now we need a clear process. I propose to add to all upcoming EIP voting proposals the ability to vote: "This vote should be void" so at least it gives a chance to voters to express their interest to propose another vote. Also, voting periods should be shorten so we don't waste so much time in debating and voting things that eventually go nowhere (a month is way too long, I propose 2 weeks).

Closed vote results: What should be done regarding proof-of-work issuance until Casper is ready? Votes Ether Voted % EIP-1295 7 283.2 0.2 EIP 1234 31 41938.5 27.7 EIP 858 129 108882.9 72.0 EIP 1227 3 65.5 0.0 Total 170 151170.1 100% Winner by a landslide: EIP-858

salanki commented 6 years ago

There seems to be concern of possible centralization risk with EIP-1295 and also concern about the network impact of EIP-858 and EIP-1234. I've submitted a EIP that proposes a reward reduction similar to EIP-1295 but without changing the reward structure. This EIP is intended as a measured decrease to provide data for making decisions on further decreases in latter hard forks.

@Souptacular I would appreciate if this EIP could be added as an option to the agenda for Fridays meeting.

OperationNine commented 6 years ago

@Souptacular Can you please add EIP 960 into the agenda as it is a fairly straight forward proposal to bring to the table for discussion. Technically it would be very easy to integrate into the Constantinople hardfork and at this stage I feel many others would also support the topic of an ETH hardcap being discussed as we are in the stages of addressing an unnecessary amount of inflation that has been long known about. Please see Vlads Medium post from all the way back to the beginning of 2017 for reference about this: https://medium.com/@Vlad_Zamfir/the-case-for-smaller-block-rewards-fb0eab38e15c

The 2 popular choices for block reward reduction thus far have proven to be EIP858 with 1 ETH per block and 2 ETH per blocks with EIP 1234. Keeping the block reward the same at 3 ETH shouldn't even be an option really with over 99% of the community vote weighing in favor a needed reduction:

https://old.reddit.com/r/ethereum/comments/9bc8i9/monthlong_ethereum_issuance_reduction_coin_vote/

Maybe 1.5 ETH could be some form of compromise?

I would like to point out that current ETH inflation schedule is not what was originally projected back in 2016 as per V's post here for reasons relating to the difficulty bomb delay: https://old.reddit.com/r/ethereum/comments/5izcf5/lets_talk_about_the_projected_coin_supply_over/dbc66rd

This is a strong justification for lowering the block reward.

There has been some good discussion happening so far about a hardcap on the Ether supply, and is one of the most commented on EIP's: https://github.com/ethereum/EIPs/issues/960

At 32 ETH per staking validator node, in theory if the hardcap was set at 128,000,000 this would mean a total of 4,000,000 validator nodes if all Ether was staked. Just some food for thought in relation to Vitaliks 120-140M proposal :)

Personally I feel a hardcap would greatly help demonstrate more maturity of the Ethereum Project. Perhaps this is something we can discuss as a community! Hope to be able to hear about it.

DarkDaoCharlieBrown commented 6 years ago

@OperationNine My understanding is only a certain % of ETH ~~will be available for~~ is expected to be staked as Vitalik confirms in a reply to this post. The 4m validator nodes you are quoting is therefore incorrect and too optimistic. Implementing a hardcap doesnt demonstrate any sort of maturity without scientific data to support it and if once proven reductions in the hardcap can always be implemented in the PoS stage of Ethereum through a burn mechanism.

The justification for a reward reduction seems to be to stop any continued fall in price. Some have tried to tie the reward to environmental impact while at the same time suggesting it would lead to an increase in price. Such logic is flawed because the $ cost of mining would continue to be the same should there be a price increase post reward reduction and therefore have no impact on the no. of miners.

Considering all reward reduction proposals are effectively an attempt to "bailout" ETH token holders who have bought ETH for speculative purposes at a high price, I think it would considerate to include EIP-999 in the discussion as a higher priority for a "bailout".

stobiewan commented 6 years ago

@DarkDaoCharlieBrown Read the spec instead of spreading false information. Relevant part is here

"DEPOSIT_SIZE - 32 ETH MAX_VALIDATOR_COUNT - 222 = 4194304 # Note: this means that up to ~134 million ETH can stake at the same time"

The ongoing cost of mining is not fixed and it is not independent. At steady state it follows price * issuance.

DarkDaoCharlieBrown commented 6 years ago

@stobiewan Please see this post which Vitalik replies to: https://www.reddit.com/r/ethereum/comments/7n3t4u/economics_of_staking/drywix6/

Ive edited my post to reflect the correct semantics.

OperationNine commented 6 years ago

@DarkDaoCharlieBrown Please see Vitaliks comments regarding a hardcap.

People do broadly support fixed supply

Community has gone a long way from "are the core devs up high going to make this happen or not?" closer to "I don't care about the source, I think it's a good idea", but there's still a long way to go to get there

We need to more actively encourage active community involvement especially in deciding economic parameters, which are legitimate tradeoffs between goals and not just a "technocratic security setting".

(Hence why we should bring EIP960 discussion into this developer meeting)

I do now believe that fixed supply is worth considering. Arguments:

With ASICs, PoW issuance fails at making coin distribution more egalitarian

With PoS, PoW issuance not needed for security

With rewards coming from rent+other burned fees, can have rewards without issuance

Source: https://twitter.com/vitalikbuterin/status/980744740277661696?lang=en

I am agreeing with Vitalik that a hardcap would be well worth the effort. Let's see if by discussing it more we can reach some organic conclusions as a community.

DarkDaoCharlieBrown commented 6 years ago

@OperationNine Please note that only 1 of the 3 arguments made by Vitalik:

With ASICs, PoW issuance fails at making coin distribution more egalitarian

Could possibly have some relevance (debatable) as announced in June/July 2018, Casper FFG has been delayed by 1-2 years. The last two:

With PoS, PoW issuance not needed for security
With rewards coming from rent+other burned fees, can have rewards without issuance

Were reliant on Casper FFG being release this year. Vitalik's tweet you source is from April 2018.

nico9111 commented 6 years ago

Above all else, we need to come up with a final answer sooner rather than later. Uncertainty is depressing for everybody and shows a real lack of governance ability. Crypto is watching and nobody wants to be the laughinstock i.e https://www.coindesk.com/ethereums-october-upgrade-could-be-29-billion-blockchains-biggest-test-yet/

@econoar proposed a few days ago on reddit that we must work on a process to vote on proposals.

This is my 2 cents:

To the argument "well I didn't even know about the vote happening", I say each and everyone should be responsible for its own investment and opinion and do its due diligence. It was a month long vote that has been shared and discussed thousands of times on Reddit and Twitter. It's a bit of an easy excuse but anyhow this is what I would propose to solve it: Etherchain NFTs airdrops for each vote proposals to every Ethereum address. This way, noone can say they didn't know about it
to the argument "well screw this vote, it missed the whole point", I say ok that's fair and there should be an automatic vote option within each and every vote proposal that says "None of the above" which, if winner, voids the entirety of the vote
to the argument "well I don't care, it doesn't mean anything to me", I say ok fair enough, we call that the blank vote option and there should be an automatic vote option within each and every vote proposal that says "I don't care" which, if winner, makes the next vote the actual winner.
to the argument "well I don't get it and would rather let the core devs handle it", I say sure, it makes sense. There should be an automatic vote option within each and every vote proposal that says "I trust the core devs to make the right call" which, if winner, lets the core devs make the call.
to the argument, "well voting with a weighted approach using addresses' ETH amount is unfair to the masses that can't afford large amounts", I say the opposite is also true in the sense that among two people with the same wealth, the larger investor is considered to take more risk and should have a bigger voice. The traditional electoral system works pretty much the same way with lobbyists doing their thing. This is a point to be discussed though.

This way, it should simplify everything moving forward and we have an urgent need to make it all simpler, readily available (i.e. etherchain NFTs airdrops) and complete (i.e. all automatic voting proposals additions listed above).

Nmining commented 6 years ago

I´m looking forward for tomorrow show. This https://cryptonewmedia.press/2018/08/30/worlds-largest-bitcoin-mining-pool-launches-ethereum-operation/ news is coming out just day before the meeting. And im wondering what to do next with my small gpu farm. Is it still worth keep mining.

justinjja commented 6 years ago

@nico9111 "shared and discussed thousands of times on Reddit and Twitter" um... There were only 170 votes.

nico9111 commented 6 years ago

@justinjja "I say each and everyone should be responsible for its own investment and opinion and do its due diligence." the point is that the proposal was communicated a lot and was open for a long time. I understand people who say hey I didn't vote because none of the above made sense which ultimately counts as a vote but I don't get people complaining they would have voted if they knew about it like getting an email from the vote proposer. It's crypto, we don't send email to people.

justinjja commented 6 years ago

My point being, that poll wasn't big enough to be relevant.

Here is a poll that has 3x more people voting, but even 500 people still isn't close to enough to equate to consensus on global network the size of ethereum. https://twitter.com/5chdn/status/1020631670398038016

nico9111 commented 6 years ago

Another way to look at it is that combining all issuance related polls clearly shows that the community WANTS block reward reduction...

eth1337 commented 6 years ago

I think it is apparent that the community would appreciate an issuance reduction.

olalawal commented 6 years ago

Again that Eip vote its bullshit, miners didn’t vote , it does not have the most important options they care about... ASIC resistance along with issuance reduction.

At 2 eth mining becomes unprofitable for 90 percent of gpu miners , at 1 only asics will remain.

i mean they already hold 60 percent of the network hash rate and you geniuses want to hand them another 33.33 percent?

Unbelievable lol

chfast commented 6 years ago

@justinjja Start reading EIPs: https://eips.ethereum.org/EIPS/eip-1355.

olalawal commented 6 years ago

https://crypto.omnianalytics.io/2018/08/23/ethereums-economic-breakpoint-an-analysis/

I don’t know how anyone can read this and not come to the conclusion :a pow fork is needed along with the issuance reduction to prevent grave levels of centralization and risk.

Pretty much covers all the angles and ends the discussion Imo.

Not seen anything posted that counters the main conclusion its the most detailed analysis I have yet seen.

andrelegault commented 6 years ago

@eth1337 a.k.a. "pamp it pleez"

atlanticcrypto commented 6 years ago

Presented without comment - EIP-960 (whether it was a joke or not) issuance paths:

MoneroCrusher commented 6 years ago

Give me an upvote if you want ETH per-block reduction to 2 ETH and at the same time fork ASICs off with ProgPOW (which will be deployment ready soon) in order to keep the chain decentralized

Downvote if you don't.

atlanticcrypto commented 6 years ago

@MoneroCrusher I personally have no belief that ProgPoW can realistically be rolled out and tested across the entire network before this fork. I am all for a PoW algo switch - but logistically that is a HUGE ask in two months time. I may be wrong, and it may be possible to implement it into the client codebases and be thoroughly tested before. I would love to be pleasantly surprised by a fast rollout. We will also do anything we can to help in the process. But if a rushed rollout puts network security at risk - I don't think it's worth it.

@chfast's EIP-1355 looks like it may be a stopgap solution, but I am no algo engineer. If EIP-1355 gets the job done with minimal security risk, I'm all for it. If it can be done in this fork then we can also have quantifiable evidence to support a change to issuance at the next fork, if no other monetary policy schedule is adopted (please please please let's do this).

MoneroCrusher commented 6 years ago

@atlanticcrypto According to @OhGodAGirl the majority is already done and she can, according to her own statement, easily implement it into Constantinople - time wise.

chfast commented 6 years ago

@MoneroCrusher @atlanticcrypto The problem is not with implementing ProgPoW but with upgrading the mining infrastructure - from new stratum and getwork protocol to upgrading software on mining pools. None of these has been started.

And if you say that only the majority of ProgPoW is ready, that's even worse. I assumed that the implementation is ready to go.

MoneroCrusher commented 6 years ago

@chfast Correcting myself: everything is done. Since months. Implementation in ethminer is done, geth is done, many more things are probably also done. Just go look st the github or ask @OhGodAGirl

Nmining commented 6 years ago

@Olalawal, that breaking point analysis , just makes me think something has to be done. At these prices of eth today $279 gpu mining profits are around between nothing and maybe still cover electric bills. If eth price climbs up or to 300 or 350 , its much better situation. What are odds for eth price moving up then? If I just could store eth value into some kind of Ethownstablecoinvault for hard times and relase it later with earlier value when bears gone.

olalawal commented 6 years ago

@Nmining If the price goes due to just a reduction per block ( and thats a big if, its not a given that the price will rise , especially when you factor in 90 percent of ethereum has already been distributed)

all that will happen is Asic producers will just deploy more hardware of course, nothing will change for the gpu miners.

Idk why that is ao hard to understand. The E3 asic costs bitmain less than 200 usd or lower to deploy.

An equivalent gpu rig costs 3 to 5k

what is so confusing about this

Nmining commented 6 years ago

@olalawal I understand that reduction and im not so confused really. That for mining. But will one or any of these "options" and asics off be enough of effect in any way at whole picture scale and for this year? Cryptomarkets live and Eth/btc(0.040196atm) rate keeps going down down. Everytime btc goes down, and takes other coins down also. And when its finally rising abit again, eth stays stuck at lowerl lvl. I realise its not all about mining and my rigs :) I hope decisions will be made and not just leave as it is.. for next 8 months. And asics off ...and fast before its too late.

ipkryss commented 6 years ago

Please consider implementing EIP-858.

Nmining commented 6 years ago

1 more thing. As from mining view, Dynamic blockreward mechanism. Could those rewards be balanced and scaled from data taken from current market value of eth? When markets are down, rewards should be still enough high to keep machines running, And when bulls are running high, mechanism could lower abit rewards. And stack some that time unused reward material outcome to be used for next bears market time and so on. If cryptos go down or up, material expenses like electricity and hardware still cost. But final point to stop mining (smaller mining operations)because of too low profit, and fear of losing miners to other coins could be arranged this way. At year rate maybe this could still lower network security expenses? without loosing miners. I really havent been thinking this for more than few mins. I dont have any facts or evidence or research done to show this could work or fail.

olalawal commented 6 years ago

@Nmining , I just do not see any hard proof that dropping the issuance will bost prices to the point that the network is able to keep the gpu portion of the network.

Whn btc rose to 20k it took eth up with it , of couse btc dumping since january took us down as well, you have to take the good with the bad thats life.

The real reason for eth btc ratio being so bad are th delays in th upgrade of th protocal that were promised back in 2013 , delays in scaling solutions , plasma, raiden even Aion have not produced a working product.

Miners would not have to sell but a tiny portion of thier ethereum if not for all the delays which as a developer myself I have no problem with.

Making good robust software solutions that scale takes alot of time and effort, the market is too stupid to understand that but its easy to blame gpu miners who right now hold less that 30 to 40 percent of the daily issuance.

Its the mega farms and datorhalls of bitmain and co that are doing most the dumping.

If you hand over 90 percent of the issuance to them by pushing out the 30 percent gpu miners nothing will chang regarding the daily sold ether.

Nmining commented 6 years ago

When btc was at 20k peaks, mining and costs wasnt really a problem,. I had problems to find any more gpus, but then suddenly all stocks were gone. Maybe there comes better times again. 5 hours till devs meet. I hope the meeting comes up with answers for future of Ether and its path. I will prepare some popcorn.

salanki commented 6 years ago

@olalawal anyone who believes issuance and the current bear market is related is naive. ETH is down just like every other crypto as the hype of the rally from Q4 fall is out. Same for all other coins. Issuance is such a small part of the market forces that it won’t be noticeable in either direction. There might be reasons to lower issuance, but a quick price fix it is not.

SaiLyfee commented 6 years ago

I think 1.5 ETH is the best thing the community could ask for at this stage. EIP 858 is proposing 1 ETH block reward and EIP 1234 is proposing 2 ETH block reward. Let's take what EIP 1234 is offering and compromise for 1.5 ETH. We could even call it EIP 2092 as tribute to combining EIP 858 and EIP 1234 together as a means of recognition.

2 ETH most certainly is not the real compromise here.

1.5 ETH is the real compromise between 1 ETH and 2 ETH.

3 ETH should not even be being considered..the vast majority want a decrease. The options are on the table, so it makes sense to cut down the middle.

Just my 2 wei..

olalawal commented 6 years ago

@salanki Exactly, do people really belive it will boost prices? Naw I think not , ita just Hodlers worried about their stake being diluted.

With no ASIC fork , I say leave things as they are and roll progPow + Issuance change to 1 or lower in the next fork six months from now.

The best case scenario for all parties is a pow fork NOW and a drop in issuance to say 1.5 ether , with a chance to revisit the rate next fork.

If we can’t do both , things should stay as they are , pushing out gpus from the issuance process could have so many dangerous consequences, 51 attacks, higher gas fees due to empty blocks being mined by large actors , which could drag the network to a screeching halt etc.

Ethereum started with Gpu pow and it should continue as such... so say we all 😇

ahsbqt commented 6 years ago

We should stay GPU only and fork as monero did taking asics out of the equation

OperationNine commented 6 years ago

1 ETH and a hard cap.

1.5 ETH is closer to current BTC issuance, but the fact of the matter is that we've had out of control inflation for close to a year now and a lower than BTC issuance would actually bring things more in balance.

axic commented 6 years ago

Would like to propose some new EIPs for consideration:

chainid opcode: https://github.com/ethereum/EIPs/pull/1344
reserve precompile address range: https://github.com/ethereum/EIPs/pull/1352
reduce cost for calling precompile: https://github.com/ethereum/EIPs/pull/1231 or https://ethereum-magicians.org/t/eip-1109-remove-call-costs-for-precompiled-contracts/447/8

mohsenghajar commented 6 years ago

Absolutely. Eth is crashing much harder than others and it will put everyone at risk.

On Fri, Aug 31, 2018, 8:41 AM Felix Watkins notifications@github.com wrote:

1 ETH and a hard cap.

— You are receiving this because you are subscribed to this thread. Reply to this email directly, view it on GitHub https://github.com/ethereum/pm/issues/55#issuecomment-417651538, or mute the thread https://github.com/notifications/unsubscribe-auth/ANH0wu_zru0iipo-ii8ddHVVlMGD-dg4ks5uWS7qgaJpZM4WQsxW .

MoneroCrusher commented 6 years ago

Breaking news: To all disbelievers & E3/E9 owners: BCI TO ADOPT ProgPOW at block height 542524. https://twitter.com/btcinterest/status/1035507316987232258

bovcan commented 6 years ago

until ASIC can mine ETH, ETH will crashing... If you lower block reward, GPUs will leave, ASIC will stay. So what did you do?

MoneroCrusher commented 6 years ago

Very important to prevent ASICs. There will be a fork if devs don't respect the decentralized nature of the very protocol they're trying to develop. Let us know what you decided with regards to ASICs.

chfast commented 6 years ago

We are reviewing ProgPoW, but this change cannot happen in Constantinople because there is not enough time.

nico9111 commented 6 years ago

and more threats. If it doesn't go your way, it's not decentralized. grow up or fork the heck out of it, who cares. POS'll be there soon and this conversation will be over.

MoneroCrusher commented 6 years ago

@chfast ProgPOW will be live on a mainnet next week in approximately 158 hours. OhGodAGirl helped them implement it, she said she could very easily offer several developers to implement it in Constantinope, for free that is. GETH is done, ethminer implementation is done, benchmarks were made.

Can you let us, the community, in on your thought process of rejecting it in Constantinople. The community won't accept a simple "no time". Please be transparent to the community what exactly there is no time for. Each piece of the puzzle that is missing to accomplish it. I'm in no way affiliated with ProgPOW or the developers behind it, I'm just a simple miner.

But I know: if you reduce BR without honoring miners and decentralization, there will be a fork. I'm not personally doing one but I've read about numerous people willing to support it, and I really hope it won't end that way, as it would probably damange crypto and the market if it were to happen. There's also always the option to delay Constantinople until you are sure a majority of the community will support it. Supporters of BR issuance reduction only all believe BR reduction will make ETH "moon", let me tell you: it won't.

Do you know what surpresses the price? Bitmain and other manufacturers mining ETH on a big scale in secret, putting constant market pressure on the books because they don't care about ETH. They'll sell it to buy BTC/BCH, the only thing that is more equalized is a big chaotic community of miners, each deciding themselves what they do with their coins, and not the investors behind them, which don't exist in the first place, mostly.

ethereum / pm