The HW requirements increase very very minimally.
See this response on reddit: https://www.reddit.com/r/ethstaker/comments/nk9qzt/multiple_...
Re:The Merge
by alchemist1e9 on Saturday August 20, 2022 @07:27PM
(#32536052)
Do you see the same issue I see? I don’t understand why they aren’t concerned about it.
The hardware expense per node is very minor compared to the cost of 32 ETH, so it's a weak incentive to consolidate.
Weighed against that, the slashing penalties per node increase, the more nodes fail at once. That gives an economic incentive to decentralize.
Re:The Merge
by nuclearnice1 on Saturday August 20, 2022 @08:15PM
(#32536277)
The validators have staked 32 ETH to the network. If they stay up, they get rewards. If they go down, they get hit with penalties. This incentivizes building a reliable system.
Is it sufficient? I’m not sure.
> if everyone calculates the same, the network will physically shrink.
Are you asking why it won't consolidate on AWS?
Penalties for offline validators are greater if many validators go offline for similar timeframe.
Is there a good place to read more about this hardware requirements as a function of validator slots? A concern in my mind with PoS is what is the incentive to expand the physical hardware footprint of the network. I understand this implies more energy usage, however it is a requirement for a decentralized, distributed, and resilient system, otherwise it can very easily be physically attacked if the footprint becomes overly concentrated with a few very powerful nodes.
Unless the hardware requirements are a convex function of total staked then if me and you both want to stake we will see the hardware and network/bandwidth costs as something we could share, which if everyone calculates the same, the network will physically shrink.