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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

#231

Post by quonn »

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?

The government can simply pass a law. There are far bigger injustices. Why do I pay taxes and Facebook doesn‘t?

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

#232

Post by xyzzyz »

BTCOG wrote: post #211
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 ve…

The amount of energy used is only one aspect of the matter. The other is value derived from that energy. I think it is safe to say that regular banking provides not just twice the value of Bitcoin, but in fact probably two orders of magnitude more. Pretty much everyone uses regular banking, while pretty much nobody uses Bitcoin, and not only they use banking more, they use it many times a week or even a day. The comparison is not even close.

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

#233

Post by derivagral »

michael_vo wrote: post #32

What are the attack vectors on PoS. With PoW you need 51% of the mining power to take over the system, which is very labor intensive to set up. With PoS could you take over all coins by buying 51% of the existing coins? So if the market cap of ETH is 200BB spend 100BB to double your money?

Tail risk as I understand it is going to be fun. If your staked nodes lose connectivity (or your pool's) the network can penalize them by slashing the ETH and the stake, right? So after everyone centralizes on a few nodes in the main providers, aren't bad actors heavily incentivized to attack common infra to remove $/power/currency/voting from others and thus shrink the chain?

I don't think the network can figure out an "oops, AWS or Comcast went out; my nodes at home or in the cloud shouldn't get slashed" vs "lets sabotage an ISP or network for enough time to trigger penalties and repeat it".

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

#236

Post by endisneigh »

micropresident wrote: post #228

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…

> 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.

How can you say this in good faith when BTC doesn't do the same things existing financial systems do?

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

#237

Post by jyu »

kemonocode wrote: post #96
bsedlm wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> the initial distribution of the coin has to be wide enough I don't understand how proof of stake works to the depth I understand proof of work. But this reassures me that it's feasable that they'll accomplish the same distributed consensus. So then, could I say that Ethereum proof of stake will allow the owners of the coins (ether) to be independent from the owners of the mining operations? or uhmm... is the indepe…

Ethereum proof of work made it so the owners of the coins could be independent from the owners of the mining operations, even if in practice many miners end up keeping most of the block rewards themselves and only reinvesting what they need in new infrastructure and to maintain what they already have. Proof of stake makes it so the miners and holders are now the same (you stake the coins that you have, or you pool th…

Maybe it is spread out now, but won't there be centralized aggregators of eth so some point in the future a handful of POS nodes control a disproportionate amount of power? Is it so hard to imagine that coinbase or some other exchange accumulates enough eth to sway transaction validation?

Seriously, please answer if this is wrong!

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

#238

Post by jimbob45 »

roel_v wrote: post #75

Maybe this is a good time and place to ask - let's say I want to buy something using Ethereum. Is it correct that when I look at, say, https://ycharts.com/indicators/ethereum_average_transaction_... , you have to pay USD 20 just as payment fees? I wrote off Bitcoin as a payment mechanism a long time ago because of this (although it seems BTC tx costs are now lower than ETH?), is this the direction tx costs for all cr…

Nobody knows whether or not cryptocoins are currencies of the future but I'm certainly willing to let them innovate for the next few decades figuring out if there's a path forward.

However, I cannot abide by a money speculation mechanism which uses as much electricity to mine worldwide as the Netherlands use in total. That's absolutely asinine to me.

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

#239

Post by BTCOG »

G3rn0ti wrote: post #220
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…

In the long run, it's going to be very green. There are Crypto Climate Accord groups working to ensure Bitcoin is carbon-neutral by 2030. What is being done currently is making leaps and bounds in using solar, hydro, wind and trapped energy for bitcoin mining. It's pushing industry to green. Not the phony narrative that's constantly pushed by people who are quite literally, spreading allowed disinformation across HackerNews for the past several years on end.

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

#240

Post by artifact_44 »

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?

Because electricity costs money. When the cost of electricity exceeds the value of coin you mine, you will stop mining. If you make a coin that takes half as much energy to mine, miners will just mine twice as much of it. Its like y'all are just discovering capitalism for the first time.
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