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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

#211

Post by BTCOG »

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…

Again with this same tired nonsense on Hacker News. Famous for censoring worthwhile comments to death while leaving up misinformed "curious" posts that mislead everyone. Bitcoin is using half of the power as banking systems. Bitcoin is using half of the power, of the gold industry. Might I suggest, if you think you can suggest banning things for using too much carbon, that you first quit working, quit driving your vehicles, and disconnect the power in your house. I don't think it's good for the environment in you doing so. In fact, your carbon consumption should be banned. Turn your computers off. Unplug your wasteful device chargers, you've had enough.

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

#212

Post by disruptalot »

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…

This is one of those "Freakonomics" type ideas.

On the surface this sounds like bitcoin's PoW use will simply stop. It's actually the entire opposite.

When governments ban it, they go after sizeable, identifiable organizations running these operations, that is their only choice. These operations are optimized in their energy usage, because it's only in their interest to reduce their consumption relative to the value of the coin they mine.

The moment these operations are shutdown, there is a massive sink in the hash rate, smaller operations and hobbyists will rush in to fill it. Hash rate gradually climbs back up and instead you have 10x the energy usage because you can no longer run the PoW in a scalable way.

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

#213

Post by grogenaut »

selfhoster11 wrote: post #201
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?

We have such a system for appliances already, energy star. And we do restrict the manuf and sale of appliances that can't meet those goals. Same for cars.

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

#215

Post by selfhoster11 »

de_keyboard wrote: post #108
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…

> 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? Unless you are building a dark web market, why would you want to? It will be more convenient for the vast majority of users to pay with card or PayPal.

One reason that comes to mind is trying to be the change they want to see in the world. Cards and Paypal already have heaps of adoption.

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

#216

Post by pavon »

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/

Unfortunately, NVIDIA already accidentally leaked a driver with without those limitations within days of releasing those cards.

https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2021/03/nvidia-accidenta...

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

#217

Post by mckeed »

gradys wrote: post #144
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…

Would Ethereum be able to make the switch to PoS if it had never used PoW originally? How would they ensure a good distribution of ownership?

It's a difficult problem, but there are coins that have managed it. Stellar has piggybacked on other services to distribute – Facebook, Keybase, and Coinbase. There's an energy-efficient memecoin that distributes based on Folding@Home contributions that has become the #1 monthly F@H team.

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

#218

Post by tshaddox »

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!

I don’t want to pay more for fancy sports cars or houses because other people are willing to pay higher prices for those things either.

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

#219

Post by jimbob45 »

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…

Fucking thank you. I get just as many downvotes when I suggest this but it's very obviously the right thing to do.

PoW doesn't scale. It eats up power needlessly and we're only stuck on it because the original BTC was a PoW cryptocoin. Simply banning trading of PoW coins would do mounds of good - the crypto community would be better streamlined to move toward PoS coins of the future and environmentalists wouldn't have to waste their resources lobbying to ban BTC anymore.

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

#220

Post by G3rn0ti »

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…

> Banning their trade won't categorically stop PoW cryptocurrencies. What it should do is completely tank their value and get the world to move on to less destructive coins.

This ban needed to be internationally, though. Pretty difficult to enforce on a global scale. And then it would only have a short term influence on the price of, say, Bitcoin, until enough “black” mining power emerges.

I would just relax. Bitcoin is not going to destroy the planet. In the long run it’s going to be a niche financial tool compared to the scale of Ethereum or other competitors (Cardano, Solana or Algorand). It’ll be the PoS enabled DeFi networks that are going to disrupt the banking business.

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