Ethereum Plans to Cut Its Energy Consumption by 99 Percent • Hacker News Board

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

#251

Post by seibelj » Thu, Jan 03, 2019, 2:16 PM UTC

jillesvangurp wrote: post #220

I'm glad we switched away from Ethereum in favor of Stellar; it will take most of this year and probably next for the dust to settle on this. Until then, Ethereum continues to be unusable for serious dapps (which are rare to begin with) that have expectations that exceed having reasonable transaction throughput ( Until then, this is a toy platform for wannabe ICOs, misc gambling applications, and not much else that I…

Stellar, like Ripple, is centralized. They run an append-only database that only they can approve transactions on. Ethereum is attempting to be far more decentralized, which is why it’s so difficult. Stellar may solve problems but the types of problems it solves are nothing like what Ethereum is doing. And smart contracts are indeed important for many applications, despite their flaws.

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

#252

Post by wpietri » Thu, Jan 03, 2019, 2:17 PM UTC

dnautics wrote: post #110

wpietri wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Definitely. A few years back Jesse Ausubel gave a great talk in SF on this: http://blog.longnow.org/02015/02/06/jesse-ausubel-seminar-me... A core point was that economic growth has now decoupled from many resources. Computers are an obvious aid here; look at how much time we spend in front of one screen or another. My laptop is hugely valuable to me, but it took something like 1g of materials per hour of use to buil…

I'm sympathetic to the idea that technology decreases the per unit cost of productivity output, but the whole point of stimulating economic growth (via factors like inflation) doesn't work if the stimulus doesn't outpace the improvement in efficiency. Technology is fundamentally deflationary. So if you believe that inflation (and growth) is necessary for social stability, you must incentivise consumption beyond techn…

I think we're talking about two different things: economic value and the price of currency. I agree that you don't want currency deflation. But over decades, I don't think that has much to do with the value to users of goods.

I can think of a few obvious places where they split. One is where we increase quality. A well-trained chef doesn't use significantly more resources than a bad cook, but the result is much better. There's also quantity; by 1980s prices, I have lost millions of dollars worth of data storage in my couch cushions. (Entertainment is a great example of both dimensions.) And it can be perfectly healthy for an economy to decrease hours worked for the same or better result, as in Germany: https://www.economist.com/graphic-detail/2018/12/28/why-do-s...

So sure, we want currency stability, and we don't want recessions. But I don't think we face a Midas Plague [1] scenario.

[1] https://archive.org/stream/galaxymagazine-1954-04/Galaxy_195...

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

#253

Post by gcmartinelli » Thu, Jan 03, 2019, 2:32 PM UTC

Criticizing cryptocurrency for it's energy consumption is absolutely ridiculous. Every step in technology requires ever increasing energy consumption... hell... the universe expects us to keep increasing complexity and energy consumption! Increasing entropy is basically our purpose...

And trying to decide what is - or isn't - a valid use of energy is pure arrogance. If anything, we should be arguing about energy sources...

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

#254

Post by eeZah7Ux » Thu, Jan 03, 2019, 2:33 PM UTC

einr wrote: post #185

koliber wrote: post #175

Coin miners use lots of electricity and release a lot of heat. Electrical heaters use lots of electricity and release a lot of heat. Would it be viable to start a company that sends attractive-looking coin miners to people who heat with electricity? Have the coin miner subsidize 25% of the electricity consumption as the icing on the cake. Would the numbers work on that? Heating is mostly used in the winter. However,…

Would it be possible to efficiently transfer the heat into the air without using fans? Because having a bunch of GPU fans on full blast in your living room is not an option. Electrical heaters are silent and need to be.

You can heat up water in a boiler in a basement in a traditional heating system.

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

#255

Post by DennisP » Thu, Jan 03, 2019, 2:38 PM UTC

keymone wrote: post #250

DennisP wrote: post #246

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So the basic idea of stake grinding is that by trying lots of different things, the staker can increase his odds of being the one to create a new block. This can be prevented without trusted third parties if you have a collaborative way to generate random numbers, which cannot be manipulated by the stakers. For example, in Dfinity they use threshold signatures. If any m of n stakers submit their part of the signature…

> If any m of n stakers submit their part of the signature, a random number is created; no smaller subset of stakers can predict what that number will be, and the number is the same regardless of which stakers submit. so the number is known just from who is participating in the scheme? who controls the `n`? > Any staker can see the evidence that you signed conflicting histories what if there is a temporary network sp…

The number isn't known until all m submit their signatures. I think n is a protocol parameter, so the community will decide by the software they agree to run.

If you sign conflicting blocks you get penalized, but "conflicting" is tightly defined. E.g. signing two different blocks at the same block height is a conflict. That's not something you can do if you're on one side of a network split, and it's certainly something you can avoid doing.

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

#256

Post by ChaosEnergy » Thu, Jan 03, 2019, 2:39 PM UTC

keymone wrote: post #230

bouncycastle wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You should really be careful with how you play with definitions, as that will lead down to a slippery slope. Remember that time when someone managed to generate 184 billion bitcoin? With your reasoning, we can now say that the succeeding hard-fork to 'fix' the issue by slashing the bitcoins was theft.

> Remember that time when someone managed to generate 184 billion bitcoin? you're being intellectually dishonest or even outright manipulative here. there were never 184 billion coins created on bitcoin chain, there was a bug in validation logic of bitcoin client that made it follow the chain that was invalid. are you seriously trying to compare that to stealing coins from somebody on a valid chain? really?

> are you seriously trying to compare that to stealing coins from somebody on a valid chain?

They're not stealing coins from someone on a valid chain, they are forking away to another chain and slashing the user's stake. The user will still have all their coins on "their" chain and it's up to everyone else to decide which chain is "the right one". If the 51% user is truly malicious, the majority of network participants will move away to the new chain, rendering the 51% user's tokens (near) worthless.

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

#257

Post by PurpleBoxDragon » Thu, Jan 03, 2019, 2:41 PM UTC

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…

>Doge

Isn't this an odd example to use since it was created to be a parody of cryptocurrency, or did I mix up my crypto-history?

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

#258

Post by keymone » Thu, Jan 03, 2019, 2:44 PM UTC

DennisP wrote: post #255

keymone wrote: post #250

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If any m of n stakers submit their part of the signature, a random number is created; no smaller subset of stakers can predict what that number will be, and the number is the same regardless of which stakers submit. so the number is known just from who is participating in the scheme? who controls the `n`? > Any staker can see the evidence that you signed conflicting histories what if there is a temporary network sp…

The number isn't known until all m submit their signatures. I think n is a protocol parameter, so the community will decide by the software they agree to run. If you sign conflicting blocks you get penalized, but "conflicting" is tightly defined. E.g. signing two different blocks at the same block height is a conflict. That's not something you can do if you're on one side of a network split, and it's certainly someth…

> signing two different blocks at the same block height is a conflict

i don't need to sign at same height to be a participant in an attack.

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

#259

Post by keymone » Thu, Jan 03, 2019, 2:46 PM UTC

ChaosEnergy wrote: post #256

keymone wrote: post #230

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Remember that time when someone managed to generate 184 billion bitcoin? you're being intellectually dishonest or even outright manipulative here. there were never 184 billion coins created on bitcoin chain, there was a bug in validation logic of bitcoin client that made it follow the chain that was invalid. are you seriously trying to compare that to stealing coins from somebody on a valid chain? really?

> are you seriously trying to compare that to stealing coins from somebody on a valid chain? They're not stealing coins from someone on a valid chain, they are forking away to another chain and slashing the user's stake. The user will still have all their coins on "their" chain and it's up to everyone else to decide which chain is "the right one". If the 51% user is truly malicious, the majority of network participan…

> If the 51% user is truly malicious, the majority of network participants will move away to the new chain, rendering the 51% user's tokens (near) worthless.

so being successful is punished by destroying all wealth of the richest participant in the network? nice.

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

#260

Post by tim333 » Thu, Jan 03, 2019, 2:47 PM UTC

PurpleBoxDragon wrote: post #257

zanny wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

>Doge Isn't this an odd example to use since it was created to be a parody of cryptocurrency, or did I mix up my crypto-history?

And still has a $280 million cap which isn't bad considering. I'll consider the crypto bubble done when parody currencies are not in the tens of millions.