Ethereum merger is imminent, is forking imperative?

Disclaimer: This article aims to convey more market information and does not constitute any investment advice. The article only represents the author's viewpoint and does not represent the official stance of MarsBit

Disclaimer: This article aims to convey more market information and does not constitute any investment advice. The article only represents the author's viewpoint and does not represent the official stance of MarsBit.

Editor: Remember to follow me

Source: Old Yapi

Original title: Ethereum merger is imminent, is forking imperative? New Metamask updates urge users to read the details

We have talked a lot about Ethereum 2.0, from the differences between PoW and PoS, to the fate of miners after the merger, all of which are more or less involved.

Recently, the merger and upgrade date of Ethereum has been exposed (expected to be September 19th), and another issue has also frequently entered people's attention - the Ethereum bifurcation issue.

This fork is significantly different from the past. The fork of Ethereum and ETC back then was largely due to the inevitable attack on TheDAO, while this fork was to some extent chosen by the miners or users themselves.

The introduction value of sharding technology

As is well known, the upgrade of Ethereum 2.0 has two core elements: firstly, introducing sharding technology to expand network performance; The second is to shift the consensus mechanism from PoW to PoS.

The greatest value of introducing sharding technology lies in the expansion of network performance. Prior to this, Ethereum's performance issues were mostly resolved through Layer2, with the most mainstream and highly recognized solution being Rollup. At the same time, Rollup has also gathered a broad consensus in the Ethereum community, from founder VitalikButerin to the ecological application team, everyone's consensus is almost unanimous, and even the project team has focused on Rollup before Ethereum 2.0.

Compared to Rollup, the status of sharding technology has shifted from data execution to data storage, which Vitalik himself acknowledges.

In the Ethereum 2.0 core developer conference call held in mid November last year, the core developers discussed and concluded that Ethereum 2.0 may temporarily suspend its second phase plan until the feasibility of the data sharding layer Rollup solution was proven.

That is to say, Rollup has now been recognized as the most potential expansion tool for Ethereum, with the development of Rollup as the top priority. In case Rollup's path fails, we will consider using sharding technology for data execution. However, the current sharding function only serves as data storage.

But if sharding is only used as data storage, is it still necessary to directly use sharding that was originally used for capacity expansion?

There is currently no consensus on this issue, but compared to it, there are even more thorny issues that need to be addressed urgently.

PoW and PoS Controversy

The biggest issue of interest division involved in the Ethereum 2.0 upgrade stems from the transformation of consensus mechanisms, and the transition from PoW to PoS means that a large number of miners will be laid off early.

Some people question why PoS should be used when all technological improvements can be achieved based on the PoW consensus?

Vitalik's view on this is clear: upgrading PoS is to improve security and efficiency.

In blockchain, there is an impossible triangle, which is security, efficiency, and decentralization. Usually, these three aspects cannot be achieved simultaneously. And PoW and PoS have made different choices in these three aspects.

PoW ensures the security and decentralization of the entire system with no license and computing power threshold, but there are inevitably shortcomings in efficiency. In fact, it has been plagued by issues such as high latency and low throughput for a long time.

PoS, on the other hand, chose another path, no longer without permits, and instead, miners became actual participants in the ecosystem. This means that if miners make decisions that are not conducive to the entire system, the perpetrators will also pay a price (token token decrease). But its voting mechanism also reduces the security of the entire system, and at the same time, the integration of the identities of miners and capital also poses a risk of centralization in the system.

Someone once made an analogy.

In a typical PoS consensus system, everyone obtains a ticket through equity pledge, and the person who obtains the ticket sits in the conference room to guide the country.

In the PoW consensus system represented by Bitcoin, a group of people sit in the pitch black wilderness, unaware of the identities of others, how many people there are in the wilderness, and when they will come and leave. They can only communicate and ultimately reach a consensus by shouting their own opinions and listening to others' shouts.

It has to be said that this analogy is quite impressive, and the characteristics of PoW and PoS are undoubtedly evident. In fact, it is impossible to compare the advantages and disadvantages of the two, and their adoption can only reflect two different trade-offs.

In Vitalik's plan for Ethereum 2.0, the Ethereum 1.0 chain and Beacon chain will merge at a certain time. The operation idea is roughly as follows: everyone first votes to cast a block height, and at this height, Ethereum 1.0 will no longer continue to track the status and start tracking the status of 2.0.

That is to say, theoretically, as long as there are miners continuing, the Ethereum 1.0 chain will continue to operate unaffected. According to this script, we may see two Ethereum running simultaneously.

This kind of bifurcation is no longer a conventional bifurcation. Conventional forking requires the use of computational power to make choices, and the protagonist chosen is largely the miners. If we really follow the above script, this time it will not only be the miners who need to make choices, but also the overall ecosystem of Ethereum.

At present, the supporters of Ethereum 1.0 and 2.0 are completely different.

The support of the miners' camp for Ethereum 1.0 is self-evident. In their eyes, Ethereum 2.0 does not have any advantages, and the pain points that Ethereum currently faces can be solved by Layer2 or Polkadot. Moreover, if they cannot solve it, Ethereum 2.0 is likely to not be able to solve it. In addition, the drive of interests also prevents them from standing in line with a clear stance of 1.0.

Supporters of Ethereum 2.0 believe that Ethereum 2.0 is an iteration of the current version, and to improve the performance of Ethereum itself, it is necessary to shift to an ecosystem based on PoS. In their view, although there are already many Layer2 solutions on the market, these solutions are more like plugins. No matter how powerful the plugins are, they cannot represent the strength of the underlying infrastructure itself. Therefore, the replacement of PoS is imperative.

In addition to these two options, there are also voices pointing towards a return to ETC, which has also brought some positive news to ETC's recent currency performance.

epilogue

Recently, the older generation of Bitcoin player Guo Hongcai has also expressed his opinion on Ethereum forking in the community, and in his words, he seems to have already determined that Ethereum will definitely fork. Guo Hongcai has long been far from the market's sight, and this time it seems that he has indeed come prepared. And he is by no means an exception. In the eyes of many people, this may be a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, so there will also be others trying to use this rare opportunity to plan and gather miners for a bifurcation of computing power.

I remember the last bifurcation that received attention from the entire network was the power struggle between BCH and BSV, but it ultimately belonged to Bitcoin and was still the power struggle. As mentioned earlier, if Ethereum really forks, the biggest determining factor may not be computing power, but assets. As the world's largest application chain, ETH's initiative has already shifted to the asset side, and they are the decisive key.

In a sense, this is a quite radical exploration that will involve hundreds of billions of dollars in disputes and conflicts of interest among numerous groups. The bifurcation carried out in this context is bound to cause a huge market shock and even a change in the overall pattern. As for the outcome, even V God may not know. Next, we can only observe its changes and witness history.

New Metamask updates urge users to read the details

MetaMask is one of the most widely used cryptocurrency wallets in the NFT community, and has just pushed a small (but critical) update. Now, according to the initial tweet of the Web3 security application WalletGuard, it now places more emphasis on highlighting transactions that require "everyone set approval" for the MetaMask wallet, including screenshots of new features.

This update even applies to third-party services integrated with MetaMask - which means browser extensions such as the popular WalletGuardChrome extension.

But what makes this seemingly small update so important The command to set approval for everyone may be an important component of any smart contract. These are the code bits that help facilitate various transactions completed on the blockchain, so various commands are used to maintain it.

By using the 'approve all settings' command, the smart contract is granted approval authority and tokens are transferred from your wallet in the future. This includes NFT. In the case of NFT markets, this command enables the market to transfer NFT from your wallet to a third party after sales are completed.

Although this command is crucial for the operation of the NFT market, there is an important note: when the market you choose faces errors, it may also cause bad guys to maliciously transfer your wallet content to their wallet. Although phishing attacks have always been the most common theft attack media in the NFT field, there will always be some Hackermen who need to make you more careful.

Through this update, MetaMask effectively reminds its user base to maintain a clear mind when conducting NFT or cryptocurrency related transactions. Without a complex network security suite, the best choice for any user to maintain security online (especially on Web3) is to conduct their own due diligence when it comes to their money or assets. Wishing you always security in the encrypted world!

[Editor in charge: Alex]