Re: Ethereum could afford a 51% attack on Bitcoin, and profit greatly from it
Ok, let's pretend that's really a serious "paper". [1]
Ethereum is a very different cryptocurrency than Bitcoin. Ethereum focuses on smart contracts, while Bitcoin focuses on stronger decentralization and censorship resistance. It is not a homogenous market where each supplier has a "share".
Thus it is at least a very disputable assumption that Ethereum will rise in value if Bitcoin disappears or falls drastically in value. But the whole incentive structure of this attack depends on this assumption.
Ethereum actually has almost always crashed too when Bitcoin has crashed. So if Bitcoin is 51% attacked and crashes, Ethereum would also probably crash hard, because the "cryptocurrency market" as a whole would lose trust. Think about the ETFs which engage in both blockchains and their investors. They would actually probably retire from the whole crypto market as they don't want to be associated with users wasting billions on a failed attack between their own products.
I'm almost sure that these effects would make the attack a huge loss for the attackers. Well, as long as they don't short Ethereum too (and other blockchains ...) while they perform the attack
(this may actually a real vulnerability for a coordinated attack against crypto as a whole ... but supposedly there are not enough coins to short)
Ethereum could actually have to fear this kind of attack much more from its own competitors like Solana, because these are active in a much more similar market. Ethereum could actually have a hard time if Solana and other Ethereum killers come too close ... (at this moment, all Ethereum killers together have only 30% or so of ETH's market cap, but they come already close to the feared 34% attack ... ).
The last sentence between parenthesis was aktually a joke. Market cap is not the same than sales.
[1] I read the "paper" and it is ridiculously shallow. Its main section only explains a smart contract to bribe miners, which is the least important part of the puzzle. The rest is wild speculation. No wonder this "researcher" has zero citations.
Ethereum is a very different cryptocurrency than Bitcoin. Ethereum focuses on smart contracts, while Bitcoin focuses on stronger decentralization and censorship resistance. It is not a homogenous market where each supplier has a "share".
Thus it is at least a very disputable assumption that Ethereum will rise in value if Bitcoin disappears or falls drastically in value. But the whole incentive structure of this attack depends on this assumption.
Ethereum actually has almost always crashed too when Bitcoin has crashed. So if Bitcoin is 51% attacked and crashes, Ethereum would also probably crash hard, because the "cryptocurrency market" as a whole would lose trust. Think about the ETFs which engage in both blockchains and their investors. They would actually probably retire from the whole crypto market as they don't want to be associated with users wasting billions on a failed attack between their own products.
I'm almost sure that these effects would make the attack a huge loss for the attackers. Well, as long as they don't short Ethereum too (and other blockchains ...) while they perform the attack
(this may actually a real vulnerability for a coordinated attack against crypto as a whole ... but supposedly there are not enough coins to short)Ethereum could actually have to fear this kind of attack much more from its own competitors like Solana, because these are active in a much more similar market. Ethereum could actually have a hard time if Solana and other Ethereum killers come too close ... (at this moment, all Ethereum killers together have only 30% or so of ETH's market cap, but they come already close to the feared 34% attack ... ).
The last sentence between parenthesis was aktually a joke. Market cap is not the same than sales.
The fact that Ethereum is now PoS is exactly the underlying reason why it is not really vulnerable to a similar kind of attack, aimed back at itself. Feel free to disagree with me on this point: I would not mind at all discussing this further.
Thank you for capitulating so early, so everybody knows that there's nothing to see here. [1] I read the "paper" and it is ridiculously shallow. Its main section only explains a smart contract to bribe miners, which is the least important part of the puzzle. The rest is wild speculation. No wonder this "researcher" has zero citations.
In regards to Ethereum and Bitcoin not being competitors on exactly the same market, this is a really good point. I certainly think that you are right that Ethereum's market is more than just the core cryptocurrency itself, but also the smart contracts, NFTs, etc. And assuming that PoW is regarded by some as a more decentralized technology than PoS, then you are also right that Bitcoin have a market for their cryptocurrency that isn't fully in competition of Ethereum.
However, we must agree that they are still competitors to a large extent in terms of their core cryptocurrency, nonetheless.
I for one could actually imagine a future where PoS cryptocurrencies will be 'the thing to have,' and where PoW blockchains are marginalized, and especially because if PoS cryptocurrencies ever take over, then the attack vector described in this topic could very well mean that the PoW blockchains will be kept down.
In regards to the potential for an attack on Ethereum, see my recent Reply #51. I don't believe that Bitcoin would even be able to retaliate, and the other PoS blockchains pose a much lesser threat, to say the least.
Ha, I don't quite see how that's capitulating, and I certainly didn't mean to!
And about your last point, I also have some critiques of my own of that paper, but I don't suspect that their calculations of the CapEx is completely off, at least at the time it was written. And now I've seen someone (User @Stompix) estimate $12B in the mentioned AltcoinsTalks thread, as well as @franky here with an estimation of ~$24B (for both the CapEx and the OpEx).