Re:Evolution of the Ethereum Proof-of-Stake Consensus Protocol
by imtringued on Sunday December 25, 2022 @05:37AM
(#34125994)
Turing completeness is actually amazing in its simplicity.
You take a push down automata (finite state automata plus a stack) and then add the ability to read and write anywhere in the stack.
The essence of Turing completeness is the ability to take any intermediate result as an input to the computation of the next result.
This is why the halting problem is even a problem, because you need all of the intermediate results to know the end result.
Ok now back to the topic at hand. Turing completeness on the L1 layer isn't very impressive because every node is supposed execute the code to validate it. The problem with L2 then is the fact that you must somehow avoid that, i.e. the L2 layer executes the smart contract and determines a result and these results are batched on the L1 where the point is that you're not supposed to execute the contract as otherwise there is no speedup to be gained. It is sort of a paradox.
The end result has to be verified on chain. The most promising strategy so far is build a zkEVM which produces a zero knowledge proof that can be verified on L1 via a smart contract.
I still don't understand how this convinces people to buy Ethereum.
Money is supposed to be a medium of exchange because barter is expensive and time consuming. Instead of trading anything for anything we trade anything for money and money for anything. Competition is good but is Ethereum even competing?
How exactly do random wealth transfers to early adopters serve any purpose that money is supposed to be used for according to classical text books?
You take a push down automata (finite state automata plus a stack) and then add the ability to read and write anywhere in the stack.
The essence of Turing completeness is the ability to take any intermediate result as an input to the computation of the next result.
This is why the halting problem is even a problem, because you need all of the intermediate results to know the end result.
Ok now back to the topic at hand. Turing completeness on the L1 layer isn't very impressive because every node is supposed execute the code to validate it. The problem with L2 then is the fact that you must somehow avoid that, i.e. the L2 layer executes the smart contract and determines a result and these results are batched on the L1 where the point is that you're not supposed to execute the contract as otherwise there is no speedup to be gained. It is sort of a paradox.
The end result has to be verified on chain. The most promising strategy so far is build a zkEVM which produces a zero knowledge proof that can be verified on L1 via a smart contract.
I still don't understand how this convinces people to buy Ethereum.
Money is supposed to be a medium of exchange because barter is expensive and time consuming. Instead of trading anything for anything we trade anything for money and money for anything. Competition is good but is Ethereum even competing?
How exactly do random wealth transfers to early adopters serve any purpose that money is supposed to be used for according to classical text books?