Here is my first ever ethresearch post exploring a potential way to do it:
ethresear.ch/t/burning-mev-…
The idea starts by noticing that proposers make bank through MEV bribes by having a monopoly every slot.
A single proposer has full control over which transactions make it on-chain every slot. Even if other people do all the hard work, the proposer benefits most.
MEV ELI5 👇
Oct 7, 2022 • 11 tweets • 4 min read
🧵 on the math behind Ethereum's post-merge issuance
Every epoch (32 blocks, 6.4 minutes) there is an absolute upper bound on how much ETH can be issued to validators, which depends on how much validators there are
Warning: It does get mathy, but you don't have to go too deep in the specs to get started properly
This section of the specs along with some helpful commentary from Vitalik is enough to get us started:
Oct 7, 2022 • 8 tweets • 2 min read
It costs ~1 BTC to mine 1 BTC, and it costs n BTC to double-spend 1 BTC
It all works fine when n >>> 1
When a halving happens, mining 1 BTC now costs 2 BTC. Miners pull out, difficulty readjusts the cost back to ~1 BTC... while also cutting n in half
What happens when n < 1?
It really is all about *relative* security. It's why "BTC's price will just go up and keep miners happy forever" doesn't work, especially if you believe Bitcoin is money
The same problem would occur if miners paid their mining expenses directly in BTC, bypassing fiat altogether
Jun 19, 2022 • 4 tweets • 1 min read
Isn't it neat how Ethereum's endgame monetary policy has built-in quantitative easing/tightening mechanisms that are fully automatic and result in a sustainably tiny inflation that still keeps money velocity high enough for everything to run smoothly
inb4 "nope, they change it on a whim literally all the time"
I'll take the one that uses research and social consensus to fix issues ahead of time over the one that was arbitrarily decided by a single guy in 2008, where not fixing glaring issues is supposed to be a selling point
May 14, 2022 • 5 tweets • 1 min read
Which is the most acceptable scenario?
1. Everyone is able to run a node, resources are limited as a result: fees high.
2. Few expensive nodes, many cheap nodes keeping them in check: fees lows
3. Few expensive nodes, average user can't run nodes: fees near-zero + fast tx's
Ethereum is currently in scenario 1, with high fees from sacrificing throughput for the sake of censorship resistance, neutrality and security.
But it's slowly trending towards scenario 2 with light clients, statelessness, PBS, etc.
Most alt-L1s give up and go for scenario 3.
May 5, 2022 • 25 tweets • 5 min read
Thread on the idea that "no one will spend ETH if it's deflationary" 🧵👇
tl;dr: Buying blockspace is the goal, spending ETH is the requirement. Deflationary ETH is good but not guaranteed.
First thing to point out is that Ether is inflationary by nature. It only becomes deflationary when it is actively and heavily being spent on gas fees.
The burn rate is not a hardcoded parameter, it is purely dictated by how much the market values Ethereum's blockspace.
May 3, 2022 • 4 tweets • 1 min read
100% uptime is very expensive but non-negotiable for a settlement layer.
Thanks to EIP1559, it took 7 minutes to adjust to an unprecedented surge in demand to get back to a state where blocks are half full, to have space for more transactions rather than shutting down entirely.
Yes, the little guy got priced out even than more he normally is. Yes, to him it's effectively the same as having the chain shut down for those 3 hours.
But for big money that requires quick and secure settlement, it's better to be expensive than unavailable.
May 1, 2022 • 25 tweets • 6 min read
Users priced out by ETH fees?
Rotate them to a new L1 every time the same issues pop up:
✅Glorious multi-chain future
✅Ready for global adoption
Promote sustainable rollups secured by Ethereum:
❌Wow you're an ETH maxi
❌Why is ETH trying to do it all?
I didn't think I'd have to keep explaining this in the Year of our Lord #L222 but this feels necessary again:
ETH's plan of a multi-rollup world *is* the multi-chain future y'all are always preaching about. But every little thing gets nitpicked because "lol ETH bad".
May 1, 2022 • 5 tweets • 2 min read
This is obvious for a lot of people but still:
If EIP1559's goal was just to take advantage of the high gas fees to burn a lot of ETH, they would have just increased the gas limit to lower fees but still burn way more ETH through the increased volume from the induced demand.
e.g. The market is okay with paying 50 gwei when there's a supply of 15 million gas per block.
If we 10x gas supply, fees should go down to 5 gwei.
But there's a lot of people willing to pay those lower fees so the increased volume would bring them back up to maybe 15-20 gwei.
Apr 19, 2022 • 11 tweets • 3 min read
Happy to elaborate! In short, a higher Rocket Pool market share = a more secure network.
Not only is the staking permissionless + trustless, but the operators running the actual software have *their* funds on the line first and foremost. Big incentive to not attack the network.
Contrast that to the usual model of staking other people's money for them.
Pinky promises not to attack the network with pool funds is not what secure staking should be about. Attacking should be costly to the attacker, not the innocent pool staker who just wanted some yield.
Dec 1, 2021 • 17 tweets • 4 min read
Back in the day if you wanted your own coin you had to roll out a whole blockchain for it and get listed on exchanges. That's inefficient.
Then Ethereum showed up and allowed tokens to be created and traded on DEX's within minutes.
Rollups are the next logical step.
1/🧵
2/ Ethereum as a platform allows you to cut that overhead and just use the infrastructure in place to create your token, so long as you have Ether to pay for gas fees.
Fast forward to 2021, what if you DO want to make a blockchain and do stuff differently than Ethereum?
