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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

#71

Post by SquishyPanda23 »

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…

I'm sure mine is a minority opinion, but I don't think Ethereum has any credibility as something that I'd call decentralized in the sense crypto enthusiasts often mean.

I think this is true of a lot of cryptocurrency tools as well. Centralization is okay. There is a lot of power that comes with it.

In my view Ethereum has chosen to wield that power while wearing the backwards hat and skateboard of decentralization and claiming to be one of the cool kids.

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

#73

Post by zanny »

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…

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

The development of crypto has really demonstrated an institutional inertia to moving away from the blessed official implementation. Tons of BTC forks were tried and failed, and almost all coins die when development stops than see their clients forked.

A lot of it, I imagine, has to do with... trust. That magical thing crypto users keep trying to keep decentralized. But when development of the currency is centralized... and at the end of the day, someone is the owner of the git repo... you can't decentralize the implementation of the currency.

So what we see instead is enthusiasts putting their faith and trust in the sense of the developers of their chosen coin pretty much to the bitter end. You can fork these currencies - like Bitcoin Cash succeeded in doing for the most part - but you won't steal their mindshare or userbase to any major degree. They will stick to the original client or see that particular chain abandoned entirely.

Doge and so many other coins died to negligent or exploitative developers and whomever that someone is thats proposing to take over is an unknown, at least less trusted quantity. So most would jump ship than take the chance, so coins either stay under one development process or die completely with no real middle ground.

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

#74

Post by darawk »

amasad wrote: post #61
nostrademons wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because otherwise they end up mining the chain that nobody's using. You can own a lot of ETC and it doesn't do you much good if you can't sell them because nobody's interested in using or trading them.

However in Bitcoin the opposite happened -- the classic chain is the most valuable one despite being the least "scalable" or whatever pet feature the forks has. Also despite all the bitcoin celebrities being for the fork. That's behaving more like a decentralized technology that no single entity controls.

What's happening is people are voting with their feet. Anyone can make any fork they like, and then everyone on the network can choose which one they prefer to use. That is what decentralization means. And both Ethereum and Bitcoin have that property.

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

#75

Post by darawk »

nivexous wrote: post #54
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…

Proof-of-stake will ultimatumly fail. The majority stakeholders can change the protocol at will to their benefit, and there’s no defense (without mob theft). With proof-of-work, at least miners can defend or fork. Best of luck to them though.

And why is this a problem? Sure, they can change it arbitrarily to their benefit, but they only benefit if the value of their holdings is high. If they do something that people don't like, that value will fall. So they are strongly constrained by behaving in such a way that they do not make the users of Ethereum unhappy.

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

#76

Post by shittyadmin »

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…

> 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?

From the minute they decided to back out The DAO's mistakes, they proved how centralized Ethereum was - anyone who believed it was a truly decentralized network left at that point.

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

#77

Post by banachtarski »

vvillena wrote: post #45
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.

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.

> ... for free ... for a price

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

#78

Post by opnitro »

zanny wrote: post #73
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…

> How can Ethereum be decentralized if they can so easily keep changing it? The development of crypto has really demonstrated an institutional inertia to moving away from the blessed official implementation. Tons of BTC forks were tried and failed, and almost all coins die when development stops than see their clients forked. A lot of it, I imagine, has to do with... trust . That magical thing crypto users keep tryin…

https://www.jofreeman.com/joreen/tyranny.htm This paper is ever important when trying to come up with technical solutions to societal organization.

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

#79

Post by Ericson2314 »

mabbo wrote: post #18

I want to write a snarky or skeptical comment about how it's probably going to fail, but honestly I kind of love the way Proof of Stake works. Instead of mining, those who want in put down a stake of ether that they can mine it and get a better chance of winning based on the size of the stake. If they get caught cheating, they lose their stake. There probably going to be some fun when the first serious exploits happe…

All the power not to them, you mean ;)
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