Challenges and solutions for Ethereum before the arrival of Metropolis

eliseo (26)in #steemit • 7 years ago

Ethereum's team of developers recently held a meeting where they discussed the changes needed for the platform before the arrival of their next update. Among them was discussed "abstract" the verification of signatures and the unique verification that allows the creation of contracts of accounts, and also on the reduction of the reward that the miners receive before the passage to the third phase of Ethereum , Metropolis, which involves the use of the Participation Test (PoS) on the platform as a new consensus mechanism.

The first topic of the meeting was the Ethereum Improvement Proposal (EIP) # 208. This is basically an update of EIP # 86, which proposes the creation of account contracts through the verification of signatures that validate the transaction (including a multi-signature management feature for the same portfolio). This transaction includes a unique verification mechanism of the signatures for the verification of data sent from the starting point and establishes a payment to the miner that is part of the intrinsic logic of the code.

However, the changes that developers want to establish come from a series of errors in the code: first, the addresses of the contract can not be computed, even guaranteed, without the blockchain work live; The sender's address can be calculated, but the calculation of the property can not be assured, in fact the property (assets or data) can be lost if it is not explicitly specified in the contract that the property is owned; Finally, there is apparently an exploit that could allow a miner to perform the same transaction 10 times, thus generating an opportunity to obtain payments from the computation error.

The implications of these errors could have consequences with the launch of Metropolis, which is expected in early September. One of the main reasons why the implementation of EIP # 208 becomes necessary is that for EIP # 86 it would be necessary for the unique validation (nonce), the gas price and the transaction value to be equal to zero. The creation of new contracts would depend on the code taking these specifications that are unfeasible.

The change from EIP # 86 to EIP # 208 might not mitigate discussions about the price of gas. Recall that the cost of an operation in Ethereum is equal to the amount of gas required to make a transaction, multiplied by the price of the gas. If the price of gas stays the same as the price of ether increases, as has been the case so far, then the total price of smart contracts increases.

This change of proposal entails a factor that could be restrictive if one thinks that the code of proposal EIP # 86 is going to calculate the miners' fees, because the counterpart of those fees that are the price of the gas and the price of the ether Have always fluctuated according to the logic of the market.

On the other hand, the meeting also discussed the Proposal to Improve Ethereum (EIP) # 186, which consists of the implementation of a halving: an event that will be programmed in the Ethereum protocol to reduce the reward that the miners receive A new block to the main chain. In this respect it was mentioned that they are still in progress. As indicated by the work path of the Ethereum Foundation, miners will receive less than 4 ethers as a reward until they reach 1.5 ethers.

With the activation of the halving, the aim is to reduce the annual inflation rate of the ether, which currently stands at 12% due to the liquidity of cryptoactives that are available on the network, but could be reduced to 4%, which is the Rate of inflation that the Bitcoin network cryptoactives possess.

In theory, a reduction in the emission of ethers plus an increase in demand should increase the price of ether. One of Ethereum's goals to attract more and more investors and investors to the platform.

In any case, the way to reach a consensus on a possible bifurcation of the Ethereum platform will be taken by the members of the community, as an electoral mechanism based on the CarbonVote platform has been implemented.

During the meeting Vitalik Buterin said:

"In practice, if we say that the block time is something like 25 seconds, when we make the change the fall will be 5 ethers to something like 3 ethers. This is basically what I mean. First, I believe that having higher emission levels than the current ones is, from the point of view of security, completely unnecessary. And I would say, given the recent price levels, which is even excessive and wasteful. From a political point of view, we can argue that pushing the reward price above 5 ethers and keeping the transaction time constant are two ways of maintaining the status quo of policies. As for those 2 or less (ethers), it seems more prudent. And also, in the long run, this could end up being the first decline of several."

Vitalik Buterin
Founder, Ethereum

The next decline, Buterin commented, would be given after finishing making the switch to a hybrid on the Participation Test. And the third decline would occur when the Participation Test is fully implemented, although the details are still in progress.

During the next few weeks we will see what the consequences of these decisions have been, and what the dynamics will be between mining groups, investors and stakeholders. Especially because it has not yet been resolved whether miners will use a whitelist for the processing code and whether that operation will require the price of the gas to change in some sense (even to zero, which does not seem likely); And it will also be necessary to wait for the votes of the community regarding the reward of the miners. If a change happens to Metropolis, the role of the miners will be different. Which? The community will have to decide.

#cryptocurrencyes #ether