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Ethereum will use around 99.95% less energy post merge

blog.ethereum.org

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Re: Ethereum will use around 99.95% less energy post merge

#201

Post by selfhoster11 »

DCKing wrote: post #133

Good. Very good. This may be a radical take, but I think nations should introduce some unprecedented legislation: ban trade of proof-of-work cryptocurrencies. Don't ban their trade because they make poor financial products, either because of rampant fraud or criminal activity. That's a different argument and requires different approaches. Ban their trade because global society shouldn't accept rampant incentives to l…

So burning electricity on running a cryptocurrency is not right, but burning electricity on running servers for Facebook or user tracking is all right? If that's the case, who's the arbiter of what's "too much" power for a use case?

If that's not the case, how do you propose to enforce that all use cases use less electricity, and how do you punish those who use too much?

Re: Ethereum will use around 99.95% less energy post merge

#202

Post by rapnie »

chrischattin wrote: post #175
dboat wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Many industries do a lot of harm to the environment for profits. On the spectrum of those, where do cryptos fall? I don't know and personally hold only a little bit, nothing I would be very pained to lose, but it would certainly cause a lot of economic harm to a lot of people to do what you propose. The idea cannot be taken seriously without first answering my question.

Youtube alone uses 2x the amout of energy as the entire Bitcoin network, for perspective.

..to deliver quality video services to a billion people, instead of handling a handful of transactions for some greedy financial speculators.

Re: Ethereum will use around 99.95% less energy post merge

#203

Post by rfd4sgmk8u »

r32rf43g wrote: post #183
rfd4sgmk8u wrote: post #91

ETH wont, and shouldn't migrate to PoS. PoS is a scam -- a trick, a reinvention of existing corrupt economic models. It throws out the greatest part of decentralized cryptocurrencies -- trustless, independently verifiable, auto-adjusting to external conditions, hard to fake proof of work. It replaces it with shell games and chicanery. I am very pro proof of work. The energy usage is a good thing. We can deal with the…

What are your thoughts on PoET systems?

Proof of elapsed time? The intel thing? Only works with trusted nodes and/or permissioned blockchains; not suitable for trustless/permissionless public chains. The only trustless consensus system we have today is proof of work. And it works well, at scale, for 14 years.

Re: Ethereum will use around 99.95% less energy post merge

#204

Post by X6S1x6Okd1st »

TarasBob wrote: post #160
TechBro8615 wrote: post #84

I was fairly into the space in 2014-2016 but stopped paying attention the last few years. It seems like lots of theorized applications actually exist and have a proof-of-concept now. If I’m building a marketplace business in 2021, where I want to be “crypto-first” instead of relying on PayPal and Stripe Connect, where do I start? The marketplace sells access to resources with an off-chain ACL system. It facilitates t…

This is a great solution called zk-rollup (zero knowledge rollup) https://zksync.io/ It is just as secure as the base chain (unlike polygon) and has low fees and has been live for the past few months. This is a perfect solution to simple payments. The difference between optimistic rollups and zero knowledge rollups is that you can’t deploy arbitrary smart contracts to zk rollup, it only supports a limited set of use…

As a side note:

If you as a reader are interested in math & crypto the stuff being done in the zero knowledge space w.r.t. cryptocurrencies is really cool regardless of your opinion on cryptocurrencies in general.

Re: Ethereum will use around 99.95% less energy post merge

#205

Post by kickopotomus »

rfd4sgmk8u wrote: post #104
AAA_Rating wrote: post #9

Its price will also tumble 99% . People motives to get into crypto are clear. They want to subtract themselves from government policy of constantly printing money. BTC takes care of that and it's a 14 years brand which is extremely politically expensive to make illegal On the other hand people are perfectly satisfied with their experience on Youtube, Amazon, Google, Facebook, Ebay, JPMorgan etc. which are the entitie…

I think you are correct. PoS coin is worthless coin. Imagine the tales in the future -- about the potential trillion dollar economy that was invented by some internet nerds who listened too much to people that have no idea what they are talking about, and drove it off a cliff with fancy talk of proof of stake (which was actually engineered by the existing powers to ensure their continued control of global economies).

Why do you say that? What makes PoW so much more meritorious than PoS in your eyes?

Re: Ethereum will use around 99.95% less energy post merge

#206

Post by jude- »

DCKing wrote: post #133

Good. Very good. This may be a radical take, but I think nations should introduce some unprecedented legislation: ban trade of proof-of-work cryptocurrencies. Don't ban their trade because they make poor financial products, either because of rampant fraud or criminal activity. That's a different argument and requires different approaches. Ban their trade because global society shouldn't accept rampant incentives to l…

More feasible take: ban the trade of PoW coins that cannot be shown to have been mined via green energy.

Re: Ethereum will use around 99.95% less energy post merge

#207

Post by cedricd »

beowulfey wrote: post #191
satyrnein wrote: post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you want less carbon burned, tax carbon. I'm skeptical of cryptocurrency, but the idea that regulators, already captured by banks, should aggressively ban new financial products that may one day threaten the incumbents makes me wary.

A carbon tax would filter down to the electricity consumer cost. I dont know about you, but I dont want to pay more for electricity so other people can burn electricity for virtual money. Unless you are suggesting taxing crypto itself, in which case… sure!

That's a common take, but a well-designed carbon tax could be made revenue-neutral and non-regressive.

In other words, the amount it takes in can be given back to the average person -- in forms of tax rebates, investment in public transit, education, whatever. In an ideal world a carbon tax would have no adverse impact on lower and middle class people.

I should also add that in that world higher electricity cost due to carbon tax is a good thing -- it'll help carbon-neutral sources of energy to compete and replace the more dirty forms. Which is exactly what we want.

Re: Ethereum will use around 99.95% less energy post merge

#208

Post by LeftTriangle »

DCKing wrote: post #133

Good. Very good. This may be a radical take, but I think nations should introduce some unprecedented legislation: ban trade of proof-of-work cryptocurrencies. Don't ban their trade because they make poor financial products, either because of rampant fraud or criminal activity. That's a different argument and requires different approaches. Ban their trade because global society shouldn't accept rampant incentives to l…

You people obsessed with reducing humanity’s energy usage are so tiresome. Anyone who actually cares about the well-being of humanity should be focused on increasing the amount of energy available. I want to climb the kardashev scale, not live in an eco-pod and eat bug burgers so I can scrounge every last joule.

Re: Ethereum will use around 99.95% less energy post merge

#209

Post by eeperson »

beowulfey wrote: post #191
satyrnein wrote: post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you want less carbon burned, tax carbon. I'm skeptical of cryptocurrency, but the idea that regulators, already captured by banks, should aggressively ban new financial products that may one day threaten the incumbents makes me wary.

A carbon tax would filter down to the electricity consumer cost. I dont know about you, but I dont want to pay more for electricity so other people can burn electricity for virtual money. Unless you are suggesting taxing crypto itself, in which case… sure!

Consumers can make a net profit if the tax revenue is paid as a dividend to citizens. There are number of papers about this if you are interested [1].

[1] - https://citizensclimatelobby.org/carbon-pricing-studies/

Re: Ethereum will use around 99.95% less energy post merge

#210

Post by ArkanExplorer »

josefresco wrote: post #72
wing-_-nuts wrote: post #63

I wonder how this will impact mining? Will GPUs suddenly flood the market as it becomes much less profitable to mine? God I hope so the GPU shortages have been crazy.

I've be lurking heavily in the crypto-mining communities for a few weeks now. Most are saying they'll just "move to a new coin" which is basically all they CAN do, unless they cash out early and sell their hardware. Nvidia is releasing* "LHR" (low hash rate) cards to give gamers some relief (assuming they can't be jailbroken). * https://blogs.nvidia.com/blog/2021/05/18/lhr/

Its difficult to calculate exactly the % of GPU miners that are mining Ethereum, amongst all possible choices. My estimate is 50% - 90%. (Maybe someone can reply with better data?)

When Ethereum can no longer be mined, the returns on mining the remaining 'altcoins' will fall equal to the level of new mining power that enters.

Which might very well make GPU mining uneconomical across the board.

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