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Ethereum Plans to Cut Its Energy Consumption by 99 Percent

spectrum.ieee.org

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Re: Ethereum Plans to Cut Its Energy Consumption by 99 Percent

#41

Post by amasad »

> To make their intentions clear, Ethereum’s core developers reprogrammed their PoW code to create an exponential rise in mining difficulty. Known as the “Difficulty Bomb,” it began slowing the creation of new transaction blocks in late 2016 and was expected to bring ether mining to a grinding halt a few years thereafter.

> This time bomb has, however, functioned more like an alarm clock with a snooze button. In October 2017, when mining time had already nearly doubled to 30 seconds, the Ethereum team reset the clock, delaying PoW’s doomsday by about 12 months. And they will likely hit snooze again shortly. How can Ethereum be decentralized if they can so easily keep changing it?

> In June, they decided to make a clean break and to build an entirely new blockchain—one that operates solely via PoS.

How can Ethereum be decentralized if they can so easily keep changing it?

I'm a total dilettante in crypto but if something is decentralized you can't make large-scale changes to it at the drop of a hat.

Imagine how much coordination effort it takes to change TCP/IP or HTTP.

Re: Ethereum Plans to Cut Its Energy Consumption by 99 Percent

#42

Post by r32a_ »

0x8BADF00D wrote: post #40
r32a_ wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ethereum claims to be the "World Computer" that lets you build "Unstoppable Applications". If that doesn't sound like an AWS competitor then I don't know.

Comparing Ethereum to AWS is an apples and oranges comparison at best. One is first order, and the other is second order. You could make an argument it’s a competitor to AWS Lambda, but it would be akin to saying lxc is a serverless competitor.

I'm not comparing them, Ethereum marketing team pitched Ethereum as a world computer not me.

Re: Ethereum Plans to Cut Its Energy Consumption by 99 Percent

#43

Post by r32a_ »

outside1234 wrote: post #31
r32a_ wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ethereum claims to be the "World Computer" that lets you build "Unstoppable Applications". If that doesn't sound like an AWS competitor then I don't know.

Can we get real for a second? Ethereum has no chance of taking on AWS or Microsoft. Those are multi billion dollar business with billion dollar requirements in infrastructure investment on a yearly basis. Not going to happen.

I agree! But that's what Ethereum was pitched as.

Re: Ethereum Plans to Cut Its Energy Consumption by 99 Percent

#44

Post by Quiark »

anthonybsd wrote: post #20
cdiddy2 wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is Tezos not pure PoS?

Tezos uses delegated PoS, so no, I don't think it qualifies. D-PoS is sort of antithetical to the idea of decentralized blockchain due to a small number of nodes and very questionable process of node (witness) selection.

Did you just describe Bitcoin miners?

Re: Ethereum Plans to Cut Its Energy Consumption by 99 Percent

#45

Post by vvillena »

r32a_ wrote: post #24
chrispeel wrote: post #2

Proof-of-Stake is indeed a good thing, and a worthy focus of the article. From the article we read " the long-term hope is that apps built from them will eventually make Ethereum the ultimate cloud-computing platform. " Ethereum does not claim to be a computing platform in the same way that AWS is; it's for low-complexity business logic only. I think it's misleading to use "ultimate cloud-computing platform" to descr…

Ethereum claims to be the "World Computer" that lets you build "Unstoppable Applications". If that doesn't sound like an AWS competitor then I don't know.

Think of it as one, single "world computer" and it will be much closer to reality. Everyone can access that computer for free, and use it for a price.

Re: Ethereum Plans to Cut Its Energy Consumption by 99 Percent

#46

Post by hanniabu »

amasad wrote: post #41

> To make their intentions clear, Ethereum’s core developers reprogrammed their PoW code to create an exponential rise in mining difficulty. Known as the “Difficulty Bomb,” it began slowing the creation of new transaction blocks in late 2016 and was expected to bring ether mining to a grinding halt a few years thereafter. > This time bomb has, however, functioned more like an alarm clock with a snooze button. In Octo…

The miners can choose to fork fork away from those changes. The core team is merely starting the change and the miners are supporting and carrying out those changes by continuing to mine the chain with those updates.

Re: Ethereum Plans to Cut Its Energy Consumption by 99 Percent

#47

Post by sincerely »

amasad wrote: post #41

> To make their intentions clear, Ethereum’s core developers reprogrammed their PoW code to create an exponential rise in mining difficulty. Known as the “Difficulty Bomb,” it began slowing the creation of new transaction blocks in late 2016 and was expected to bring ether mining to a grinding halt a few years thereafter. > This time bomb has, however, functioned more like an alarm clock with a snooze button. In Octo…

Enough people think the changes are a good idea that they switch versions.

Re: Ethereum Plans to Cut Its Energy Consumption by 99 Percent

#48

Post by mulmen »

lrvick wrote: post #21

Could also be 100% if their Proof-Of-Stake game theory does not work as well with real funds worth stealing as it does on testnet. Full disclosure I hold some ETH but I would not dare put all my eggs in that brazenly "do it live" basket. One party can hold >50% of all funds and we would have no way of knowing. I wish people would look at less energy consuming proofs of work that still allow us real world evidence of…

I'm confused as to the purpose of ETH. On one hand it sounds like an investment that you can "hold" as you say. On the other it is a computing platform. So what is it you "hold"? Compute resources? Why is it valuable to allow speculation on compute resources? Can a person ever really reason about the cost of a system running on ETH? How do you plan for those costs?

Is is a compute platform? A cryptocurrency? Something else? Both?

Re: Ethereum Plans to Cut Its Energy Consumption by 99 Percent

#49

Post by amasad »

hanniabu wrote: post #46
amasad wrote: post #41

> To make their intentions clear, Ethereum’s core developers reprogrammed their PoW code to create an exponential rise in mining difficulty. Known as the “Difficulty Bomb,” it began slowing the creation of new transaction blocks in late 2016 and was expected to bring ether mining to a grinding halt a few years thereafter. > This time bomb has, however, functioned more like an alarm clock with a snooze button. In Octo…

The miners can choose to fork fork away from those changes. The core team is merely starting the change and the miners are supporting and carrying out those changes by continuing to mine the chain with those updates.

Why would the miners agree to adding the "difficulty bomb" which is against their incentives? It's more likely they didn't have a say in it.
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