Why is a controversial change being shoved through without awareness of the community? Why does @OhGodAGirl have so much sway over the governance process?
âWithout awareness of the community?â That is an assertion the evidence does not support.
There were two twitter polls, a carbon vote, a tennagraph vote (both coin and gas weighted), and a miner vote. All of which came back in varying degrees of yes to strongly yes. Is there some community we that should be polled for sentiment that those would not have reached?
âand a miner voteâ Wait, the people who stand to benefit from rigging out their competition are in favor of it? Ya donât say!
âIs there some community we that should be polled for sentiment that those would not have reached?â Yes, the vast majority of investors who donât bother to take part in your tiny, non-representative, socially engineered votes specifically designed to create a false sense support for something no one wants. Itâs a controversial change being pushed through by a hijacked governance process. If this goes through it means that Ethereum has been officially hijacked.
She, like many other authors of EIP proposals, created a proposal with a reference implementation and went through the process of gaining support by talking about the issue on All Core Dev calls. The client developers all decided there was sufficient technical benefits to implementing the proposals, so the client developers integrated the change. There was significant benchmarking and testing done over the past year since the proposal was created, and an audit is currently in process, the end result of which will hopefully show the algorithm is technically sound and meets itâs intended goals (to the best abilities of the auditors).
No where in this was there a deviation from the governance process, which means no âhijackingâ occured. Please note that while it is often helpful to the developers to gauge sentiment of the community in this process to inform their decision to implement, it is ultimately their own decision of what work should be integrated. ProgPoW seems to have sufficient amount of community support where it has made it to this stage. At the end of the day, the full nodes govern the rules of the network, the developers only give them the tools to do so.
You may vehemently disagree with that conclusion, and you are free to voice that disagreement. Ultimately, a decision will be made if/when a fork should be proposed, which I believe will only contain ProgPoW. I would actually be most in favor of a soft fork approach (with a threshold of over 90%), as that allows the community to expressly show itâs final opinion through the number of full node clients who enable this change, which is the most âdemocraticâ option we have available to us in a decentralized system with no identity layer. If it worked for Bitcoin, it should work for us.
@fubuloubu
wow your post was so amazing, it motivated me to reply:
She, like many other authors of EIP proposals
The author of EIP 1057 is a close business partner of Calvin Ayre and Craig Wright. Needless to point to her bitcointalk trust page and many other pages, itâs all fitting.
(there are plenty of links in this other thread, I wonât post them again. DYOR)
https://ethereum-magicians.org/t/progpow-audit-delay-issue/3309
talking about the issue on All Core Dev calls
Together with two anonymous people (Mr. Def and Mr. Else). The naivety of the core devs to not even check that, let alone question any of the narratives brought forward, will remain as a lesson how not to do it.
The client developers all decided there was sufficient technical benefits
That says a lot about their understanding of both ASICs and mining economics. The hardware audit will show (actually several independent audits have shown already), that ProgPoWâs promised âasic resistanceâ, lately framed as âclosing the efficiency gapâ does not exist.
There was significant benchmarking and testing done over the past year
All of it nice Nvidia marketing material. They didnât even bother to change their bar charts to make them look more âcommunity likeâ. It was enough to make the core devs believe, so well done!
and an audit is currently in process, the end result of which will hopefully show the algorithm is technically sound and meets itâs intended goals
Of course not. We can expect the software audit to mostly look at the algorithm as a cryptographic algorithm, as we have seen with the four RandomX audits.
The PoW-part of the algorithm is a hardware assessment. The hardware audit will show that the promised benefits (â1.2x instead of 2xâ) do not exist.
The one effect ProgPoW has is from the PoW change itself, thatâs very disruptive and benefits the large farm of the EIP 1057 author whose contracts with Nvidia we donât know. A PoW change is like an ICO, itâs fitting that the people behind ProgPoW have a deep ICO history.
which means no âhijackingâ occured.
It was hijacked from the beginning, and persists until today. The motivation behind EIP-1057 is entirely different from what is stated in the EIP text. Welcome to the real world.
ProgPoW seems to have sufficient amount of community support
What was actually measured in these votes - hashrate, distinct human beings, mining pools, capital?
Since the votes came out largely in favor of ProgPoW, what does this mean about centralization? Wouldnât a large majority, in some cases 100%, say something about the state of centralization?
On the day this proposal was made (2018-05-03), Ethash hashrate was 265.97 TH at a profitability of 6.22 US cents/MH/day. Happy old days!
Today, Ethash hashrate is 178.83 TH at a profitability of 1.51 US cents/MH/day. (numbers from bitinfocharts.com)
There probably were never more than a few TH of ASICs on Ethash, and Ethash ASICs havenât been on sale for a year. I did math to walk through mining economics in the other thread.
So if ASICs played a small role in Ethash 15 months ago when EIP 1057 was launched, and are not economical to sell since then, why is there continued pressure to switch to ProgPoW urgently?
You cannot think about this hard enough.
Will ProgPoW accelerate centralization?
I would actually be most in favor of a soft fork approach (with a threshold of over 90%), as that allows the community to expressly show itâs final opinion through the number of full node clients who enable this change, which is the most âdemocraticâ option we have available to us in a decentralized system with no identity layer
It would be far healthier for the Ethereum ecosystem to uncover and investigate the background story of ProgPoW:
- Why is the âanti-asicâ effect less than promised, if supposedly so many âexpertsâ from Nvidia and AMD were involved. Is it an error in judgment, or is there some other story going on?
- Who are Mr. Def and Mr. Else? If they are Nvidia employees and Nvidia was trying to exclude Bitmain, Samsung and others, what else does Nvidia plan?
- Are Mr. Def and Mr. Else engineers, or marketing people?
- Is it acceptable that fully anonymous people participate in major Ethereum decision making processes?
- If the authors of ProgPoW are anonymous, what does this mean in terms of copyright or patent claims?
- Why is the EIP-1057 author working with Calvin Ayre and Craig Wright, and what does this mean for ProgPoW?
- How many TH Ethash does Squire/Core Scientific control today?
- What are the contracts between Nvidia and the company of the EIP 1057 author, as well as Squire (Calvin Ayre/Craig Wright company)?
- Is it possible that Nvidia sells chips at a discount to the EIP 1057 author in return for excluding competitors?
- Does ProgPoW help with decentralization, or help with centralization?
I think the attack from Nvidia and partners (Core Scientific, Squire) is sophisticated, the largest corporate attack on a coin ever.
The Ethereum Foundation needs support in that they managed to at least put order to the process by bringing in independent auditors for both software and hardware.
Too bad noone can audit the contracts of the company of the EIP 1057 authorâŚ
The EIP-1057 author is already trying to discredit the hardware auditor (âI do have some concerns that someone who has not built crossbars for GPUs will be doing a hardware audit on the ability to build a crossbar in an ASIC - but given the lack of choice due to CoI this seems fitting.â), but hey, she is a hard worker.
Looking forward to the audits! Hope Least Authority and Bob Rao crush some of that dark corporate stuff.
I hope I am wrong but based on Bob Raoâs credentials, Iâm not expecting a lot from the audit. He is a silicon manufacturing and process engineer. Mr Bob Rao doesnât seem have any GPUâs, SIMD or crypto ASIC design experience. Without some deep expertise in this areas, the results of the audit would be suspect.
To support my observations, I point to the following information from some web searches:
The only patent I could find in Mr. Raoâs name is DIE WITH INTEGRATED MICROPHONE DEVICE USING THROUGH-SILICON VIAS from 2014 which is unrelated to GPUâs, SIMD processing cores or crypto ASIC design.
Hereâs his bio from an article in EE Times from year 2002.
He has progressed to become an Intel Fellow and the director of an analytical and microsystems technologies at Intelâs technology and manufacturing group. He is responsible for directing the development of advanced analytical tools and methods for microprocessor performance characterization, silicon debug and yield enhancement. Rao also directs Intelâs microsystems and MEMS research and development activities.
I donât see how the results would be suspect, but it may be underwhelming. Based on his experience, I am sure Bob is smart enough to work through things from a first principles perspective and see if anything smells fishy. Sure, he might miss some nuanced thing that only those with deep expertise might know, but all things considered the audit should be quality enough to tell us if anything is obviously wrong about the implementation that conflicts with design goals, which is the point.
I am sure if the audit comes out clean, we will hear all sorts of grief about this, but I would take the results seriously instead of disparaging his credentials. I think it was very difficult finding an experienced person without any sort of CoI in this matter, so this may indeed be the best we get.
I donât see how the results would be suspect, but it may be underwhelming.
⌠he might miss some nuanced thing that only those with deep expertise might know
You cannot compare what an honest person and a liar are saying side-by-side, and learn anything from that. You first need to identify the liar.
The discovery, and innovation, of ProgPoW was that if most of the audience relies on a very small amount of a posteriori knowledge in some field (here: PoW and ASICs), while for the most part having to rely on a priori knowledge, then the best strategy is to aggressively promote oneâs own credibility and experience, while discrediting everyone else.
This sets the stage for the successful adoption of a hidden agenda, because a posteriori knowledge is the only way to reliably identify the liar.
The key mechanism of the attack is neither identified nor understood, and there seems to be limited motivation to change that so far. Maybe the audits will re-energize such efforts.
Instead, core devs believe a form of technocracy where numbers, ideas and codes are pushed through some process will lead to the best possible result.
ProgPoW is successful these last 15 months not because of their technology, which sucks, plain and simple.
They are successful because they have managed to draw attention away from things that are of high relevance to most people, and towards things that are of low relevance to most people.
I tend not to trust âfree adviceâ about sociological attacks from someone with decent knowledge about how to do them, especially when they would benefit greatly from me taking that advice.
The security of the Ethereum chain is of high relevance to the entire community, and it is not a waste of time to understand the pros and cons of implementing a proposal.
Lastly, anyone who does not respect the findings of the audit for this proposal absolutely has an ulterior motive and should not be trusted to be telling the truth in further discussion.
@ fubuloubu , the results are likely suspect because the auditor lacks domain expertise and ECH is relying on one person rather than a team of experts like the methodology used by Least Authority in the software audit.
As an outsider, the entire hardware audit process seems rather secretive and nefarious compared to the open process used in the software audit.
The hardware auditor was selected early June but the name was not disclosed until July 26 was per the following medium post. https://medium.com/ethereum-cat-herders/progpow-audit-update-july-2019-ee17718550d The goals and methodology for the hardware audit have yet to be published or made available for community input.
Contrast the hardware auditorâs approach with the software audit. Clear goals and processes have been identified and published on both Least Authorityâs Github and Medium post, along with having multiple people conduct the audit. https://medium.com/ethereum-cat-herders/progpow-audit-update-july-2019-ee17718550d
Which begs the question, why is the hardware process not transparent and why is the Ethereum community not leveraging the expertise of the broader hardware community? Why is there only 1 auditor for such a complex study?
I seriously doubt the one single person can conduct an audit which they are not a domain expert in. Thatâs like saying because I took economics in school that I can audit the effectiveness of Jerome Powell and the US Federal Reserve Bankâs monetary policy in depth and make recommendations to circumvent a potential Trump inflicted recession.
How does Bob know when something smells fishy and who is he going to consult? Itâs not like Nvidia or AMD publish their register specs or will reveal the weakness in their architectures? Or that Bob has any idea on the future roadmap of Nvidia, AMD and Intel GPUâs. Or is the Ethereum community okay with a backward looking audit that only considers old GPUâs?
How is Bob going to prove or refute Linzhiâs Open Chip Design? Itâs technically true that math blocks are easy to design but the cores will stall without an efficient cache architecture.
Will Bob know how to model the characteristics of ASICâs designed for TSMC, GF, Samsung, SMIC, UMC, etc. IP and tools when his primary expertise is a MEMS (Micro-Electro-Mechanical Systems) process (ie. not standard process). Intel fab processes are unique and their foundries have not attracted many fabless semiconductor firms away from the likes of TSMC.
I disagree with the comment because (the collective) you donât know what you donât know. Intel and Microsoft are classic examples of companies using industry collaboration for technology migration, specification development and feasibility studies. With each version of DirectX, Microsoft would confer with AMD, Intel and Nvidia for months to understand the impact of each addition or change to the spec/release. While there was fierce competition amongst each company, Microsoft did their best to ensure a level playing field and understand the key issues around the the DX spec and PPA (Performance, Power, Area) impact on the ASIC.
How do one know the audit is clean (whatever clean means)? With Bob, you are relying on one person to understand GPU and ASIC architectures and 3rd party foundries. What are the checks and balances in the hardware audit to ensure that the conclusions are correct and what is the mechanism to dispute/resolve deficiencies or gaps?
The only thing difficult in selecting the hardware auditor is that the Ethereum Cat Herders didnât seem to have a clear criteria on what was needed. For a list of GPU and ASIC experts, all ECH had to do was ask on a public forum or alternatively I could have introduced Charles to dozens of people from Intel, Nvidia or AMD or a variety of professors in this space.
There are hundreds of people who can do the work without an invested interest or conflict of interest. The best way to do that is to get multiple PoV (like Microsoft) and make an informed conclusion. Here is a list of GPU and ASIC experts from Academia that have the right credentials. And any one of us from Nvidia, AMD, Intel could have helped write the research funding grants for the Ethereum Foundation, be available to answer questions or potentially write Verilog code to synthesize certain functional blocks.
Tolga Soyata, Associate Professor, SUNY Albany
https://www.crcpress.com/authors/i18025-tolga-soyata/bio/
Tim Rogers, Associate Professor, Purdue Unversity
https://engineering.purdue.edu/tgrogers/
Tor Aamodt, Professor, University of British Columbia
https://www.ece.ubc.ca/~aamodt/projects/gpu-arch/
Chang Y. Choo, Professor, SJSU
http://www.sjsu.edu/people/chang.choo/
If the security of the Ethereum chain is so important, is it not worth a thorough audit with the right people with the right domain knowledge? Why even publish the audit if youâre not going to hear counterpoints or have the hardware community post their issues? Isnât that how the open source community works? Or the process confined to software companies who donât have a vested interest?
Hereâs an example of a customer funded audit on an ePIC Blockchain ASIC conducted by DA Integrated (DAI). DAI is an ASIC design shop in Canada with 24 employees and over 500+ ASIC designs. https://www.da-integrated.com/projects
To view the audit, refer to this link. https://pixeldrain.com/l/o3hi6WtF#item=0
Notice that the auditors did not conduct an in-depth review of the architecture despite having some domain expertise. Even though ePIC had extensive docs (architecture, chip specs, simulations, timing analysis, multiple chip layouts, etc.), the auditors excluded a comprehensive architecture review citing their assessment would not be sufficient despite their domain expertise in memory controllers, 3D and accelerator cores (aka GPU).
So Iâll ask, why Bob and ECH is comfortable with a one man audit without domain expertise when DAI, with 24 ASIC designers, graphics expertise and works with all the independent semiconductor foundries, wasnât comfortable providing a full architecture audit.
I welcome the audit if it will get to the truth using industry experts, as well as, sound methodology and thorough analysis. If the audit has major flaws, then it is not worthy of respect. The flaws may not materially affect the Ethereum community or it could be a disaster. We will never know if the process is not open and not comprehensive.
Let me close my long post with the following question ⌠Would you be satisfied with the process and results of the software audit if one person, who was iOS developer (ie. not domain expert) did all the analysis AND the goals, methodology and constructs were not revealed until the report was done?
Yay! Relax Kristy, ha ha.
I think Bryant meant the free advice from me, not the one he took from you, Mr. Def, Mr. Else, and so on - for over a year.
That is very hard for anyone to go back and realize they have been played since the beginning.
BTW I would totally choose to ignore Epic Anything no matter what they said, because as we are saying from the beginning - who actually reads spam?
ProgPoW author Kristy-Leigh Minehan is CTO of Calvin Ayre and Craig Wrightâs hosting company Core Scientific.
https://globenewswire.com/news-release/2019/08/07/1898434/0/en/Squire-Enters-Into-Development-Agreement-With-nChain.html
https://globenewswire.com/news-release/2019/07/25/1888023/0/en/Squire-Mining-Announces-Appointment-of-Kevin-Turner-to-Advisory-Board.html
https://www.corescientific.com/team
The CTO of Craig Wrightâs hosting company is âimprovingâ Ethereum? ha ha. yes. We can see that!
Just wanted to say as a home miner I support #ProgPow !
I think Ravencoin has shown that ProgPoW is not only safe to implement but also achieves its goals of bringing mining back to the masses.
We were supposed to be different than bitcoin. Bitcoin is centralized in China.
since ProgPoW had a backdoor, Iâm wondering if there is another Ethash replacement candidate algorithm
There was no backdoor - there a bug in Ethash.
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call it what you will, but its memory-hardness can be circumvented by the initiated. worse, it seems to have tainted by association any further effort to replace Ethash, which is still necessary
Backdoors are code intended for later exploitation. Please do not accuse the inventors of ProgPoW of doing that without substantial evidence. The bug you mention is long since fixed, is there a way to circumvent ProgPoWâs memory hardness that I am unaware of?
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