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Comment by RC_ITR | Hacker News Reader

>but probably moot if these "third party service providers" are just doing the busywork of interacting with the protocol, on behalf of Coinbase, on behalf of the user.

I'm sorry, you can't just use the word protocol to change the first principles of the interaction. A bank is just doing the busywork of interacting with a borrower on behalf of me.

>Nobody can "stake better" and expect more rewards out of it.

This is such an interesting logical fallacy. The implication is that the default state is success and the 'other' state is failure. You can definitely stake better than others - that's the point of slashing.

Staking isn't nothing, it's an activity that requires skill, otherwise, why does it even exist? Shouldn't a centralized computer just do all the staking/validating if that's the case?

Like I thought crypto maximalism was about how incentives and competition solve problems that exist in trad finance?

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>you can't just use the word protocol to change the first principles of the interaction. A bank is just doing the busywork of interacting with a borrower on behalf of me

Unless Coinbase Earn is fraudulent — maybe it is, I don't know — I would argue you can and should. In the case of Ethereum, Coinbase is providing an IT service. In the case of [other protocol], Coinbase is hiring a contractor to provide an IT service on their behalf. For any reasonable understanding of what financial lending is, there is no "borrowing" here.

>Staking isn't nothing, it's an activity that requires skill, otherwise, why does it even exist? Shouldn't a centralized computer just do all the staking/validating if that's the case?

These claims demonstrate a profound, ignorance of how these protocols work — something I'm calling into attention not to berate you personally, but so that people who stumble across this thread later appropriately discount your claims.

> These claims demonstrate a profound, ignorance of how these protocols work — something I'm calling into attention not to berate you personally, but so that people who stumble across this thread later appropriately discount your claims.

Please enlighten me then? I’d love to understand why they call it “rewards” and “penalties” if you can’t be good or bad at it.

Like from[0]:

The key concept is the following:

Rewards are given for actions that help the network reach consensus.

Minor penalties are given for inadvertant actions (or inactions) that hinder consensus.

And major penalities—or slashings—are given for malicious actions.

How can you read the above and make the point that everyone gets the same expected benefit from staking? Were you unaware of the minor penalties point?

[0]https://launchpad.ethereum.org/en/faq

And to be clear, since I think you're way missing my point here - consensus requires the potential for diversity, otherwise, if validation is deterministic (as you imply), then there is absolutely no need to decentralize it.

p.s. I won't criticize you personally, but I will remind you that when one feels like someone really doesn't understand something, there's a decent possibility they themselves don't.

Also, to lighten the mood - isn't it funny that ETH spells things wrong on its website so often? If only there was decentralized spell-check!

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