Ethereum will use around 99.95% less energy post merge • Hacker News Board

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

#221

Post by jlmorton » Tue, May 18, 2021, 3:44 PM UTC

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!

As others have said, a carbon tax can be designed to refund either the entire amount, or a portion of the amount back to consumers, which might also transform it into a non-regressive tax.

But perhaps more importantly, you wouldn't be taxed because others are using electricity for virtual money. You would be taxed because your carbon emissions are causing climate change, and to encourage you to reduce energy usage where possible.

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

#222

Post by barrkel » Tue, May 18, 2021, 3:44 PM UTC

bko wrote: post #156

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…

If the government wants to put a higher price on energy or carbon, it should do so. But it should not be the arbiter of what's a worthy use of energy expenditure. I could see a lot of people make the argument the production of a lot of energy intensive goods is not worth-while.

Government is made out of people. If the people don't want the economy oriented around energy being put into finding hashes, they have the right to vote.

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

#223

Post by iabacu » Tue, May 18, 2021, 3:44 PM UTC

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 may be a radical take, but I think nations should introduce some unprecedented legislation: ban trade of proof of work cryptocurrencies.

That's not only radical, but a grotesque knee jerk reaction.

If you think about renewable energy, there's a problem of mismatched production with consumption and transmission. This causes wasted energy (or energy that is very low value), which makes renewable energy projects less viable.

Sure, one obvious way to address that is to add batteries to store such energy. Now, go mine (and refine) enough lithium to build utility-scale batteries. That's a huge environmental issue that no one wants to talk about, specially Tesla/Elon.

What's a competitor to energy batteries? Proof-of-work mining of bitcoin: it make renewable energy projects economically viable, because the energy of low-usage times can be used to mine bitcoin, which can pay for energy of high-usage times.

If there's an environmental/carbon cost to BTC mining, then attach a carbon tax to it (or something like that).

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

#224

Post by pamplemoose » Tue, May 18, 2021, 3:44 PM UTC

noja wrote: post #186

Aqua wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I cringe every time I see such comments. Ban bitcoin or ban beef because it uses too much energy. Humanity will continue to require energy as it advances and banning anything "because it uses too much energy" is a ridiculous advice. How about we ban gold mining, or set quotas on the number of children people may have, that will surely contribute to our CO2 reduction goals. It's also Orwellian and reminiscent of how t…

Wow. Where to start on this one! Where do you see the problem in using less energy for a crypto currency? Why not make a cryptocurrency that uses even more energy?

those currencies already exist. people can choose to use them, while understanding the trade-offs.

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

#225

Post by saos » Tue, May 18, 2021, 3:45 PM UTC

A well timed article. Glad I invested early

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

#226

Post by IncRnd » Tue, May 18, 2021, 3:45 PM UTC

> Ethereum will use at least 99% less energy post merge

I realize that is the text from the article, but what they really meant is "will use at most 99% less energy". The reduction will be at least 99%. The future value will be at most 1% of the current value.

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

#227

Post by CarlBeek » Tue, May 18, 2021, 3:46 PM UTC

fvdessen wrote: post #189

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…

PoS is not just a more environmentally version of PoW. It is a lot more vulnerable to state level actors. If the state takes over / subverts / influences the limited number of stakeholders, then it is game over. With PoW the state can influence the existing miners, but cannot prevent new independent miners to pop up and counter act.

There are 141,139 validators active in Ethereum as we speak (source: https://beaconcha.in/), corrupting that many people is very difficult. There are smaller PoS systems with eg. tens of validators which are more susceptible to state capture.

Bitcoin (the network with the most mining effort) lost 25% of their hashing power due to blackouts in Xinjiang. (Soure: https://twitter.com/nic__carter/status/1384938089748041730?s...) State capture of a majority of Bitcoin miners is comparatively easy.

In addition, independent miners have less hardware and that hardware is generally less efficient when compared to the large ASIC farms. In reality a recovery would probably require social consensus and a hard fork

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

#228

Post by micropresident » Tue, May 18, 2021, 3:46 PM UTC

People seem to forget that this energy use is a consequence of miners wanting coins because of the subjective value of the reward. Even stakers can expend more money for a better chance at receiving the eth2 staking rewards. This will result in just as much energy use for a given reward value as Bitcoin. The question is if you can account for it. Eth2 propagandists are being very -- unintentionally -- dishonest about this.

Energy use will always meet demand for coins. This is true even in USD. Bitcoin is actually more efficient than existing financial systems. Bitcoin removes all the labor and expense that goes into running ATMs, Bank buildings, tellers, and so forth. Eth also does this.

The real way to address energy use is to introduce seignorage into the system. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seigniorage) in order to do this, you must give some of the new issuance to people who are not part of the system of validation.

Eth2 might work for awhile, and it might make people rich as people put up more and more stake in order to obtain rewards. (The block reward is effectively a risk-free rate of return). However, long term, you end up with a larger and larger percentage of the economy controlled by very few people.

Systems like this dis-incentivize the creation of real value through investment in real-world goods and services. Long term, people will opt out of this nonsense as it produce coins which are not useful in real business transactions due to the deflationary nature of the tokens.

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

#229

Post by pamplemoose » Tue, May 18, 2021, 3:46 PM UTC

fvdessen wrote: post #189

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…

PoS is not just a more environmentally version of PoW. It is a lot more vulnerable to state level actors. If the state takes over / subverts / influences the limited number of stakeholders, then it is game over. With PoW the state can influence the existing miners, but cannot prevent new independent miners to pop up and counter act.

or you can fork and remove the bad actors, burning all their coins. good luck with their next attack. in contrast, you can't burn an attackers fleet of miners

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

#230

Post by mkl95 » Tue, May 18, 2021, 3:46 PM UTC

I have fond memories of Solidity. Not the prettiest language but I built some fun toy projects ("sports prediction" AKA gambling) with it circa 2017/18. However the whole energy thing discouraged me from building anything bigger. I may give it a shot after this merge.