Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Ethereum will use around 99.95% less energy post merge

blog.ethereum.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

311–320 of 1001 posts

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

#311

Post by jude- »

Your post advocates a

(X) technical ( ) legislative (X) market-based ( ) vigilante

approach to solving the double-spend problem in a decentralized cryptocurrency. Your idea will not work. Here is why it won't work. (One or more of the following may apply to your particular idea, and it may have other flaws which used to vary from state to state before a bad federal law was passed.)

(X) Scammers can easily use it to defraud users

(X) Smart contracts and other legitimate cryptocurrency uses would be affected

( ) No one will be able to find the guy or collect the money

(X) It is defenseless against network-level attacks

( ) It will stop scams for two weeks and then we'll be stuck with it

( ) Users of cryptocurrencies will not put up with it

( ) Microsoft will not put up with it

(X) The police will not put up with it

(X) Requires too much cooperation from exchanges

( ) Requires immediate total cooperation from everybody at once

( ) Many cryptocurrency users cannot afford to lose business or alienate potential employers

( ) Scammers don't care about invalid addresses in their lists

(X) Anyone could anonymously destroy anyone else's career or business

(X) Replicated state machines do not scale

Specifically, your plan fails to account for

( ) Laws expressly prohibiting it

( ) Lack of centrally controlling authority for cryptocurrencies

( ) Open relays in foreign countries

( ) Ease of searching tiny alphanumeric address space of all private keys

(X) Asshats

( ) Jurisdictional problems

(X) Unpopularity of weird new taxes

(X) Public reluctance to accept weird new forms of money

(X) Huge existing software investment in PoW

(X) Huge existing software investment in composable smart contracts

(X) Susceptibility of protocols other than PoW to cheap fork creation

(X) Willingness of users to install OS patches received by email

(X) Armies of worm riddled broadband-connected Windows boxes

(X) Eternal arms race involved in all network-healing approaches

(X) Extreme profitability of scams

( ) Joe jobs and/or identity theft

(X) Technically illiterate politicians

(X) Extreme stupidity on the part of people who do business with scammers

( ) Dishonesty on the part of scammers themselves

(X) Bandwidth costs that are unaffected by client filtering

(X) Bitcoin already exists

(X) Error states that require manual intervention to fix

and the following philosophical objections may also apply:

(X) Ideas similar to yours are easy to come up with, yet none have ever been shown practical

( ) Any scheme based on opt-out is unacceptable

( ) Block headers should not be the subject of legislation

( ) Blacklists suck

( ) Whitelists suck

( ) Countermeasures should not involve wire fraud or credit card fraud

(X) Countermeasures should not involve sabotage of public networks

(X) Countermeasures must work if phased in gradually

( ) Sending transactions should be free

(X) Why should we have to trust you and your servers?

( ) Incompatiblity with open source or open source licenses

(X) Feel-good measures do nothing to solve the problem

( ) Temporary/one-time addresses are cumbersome

( ) I don't want the government reading my cryptocurrency transactions

( ) Killing them that way is not slow and painful enough

(X) The rich should not get richer

(X) Money and finance are legal constructs, and should not be replaced by undemocratic systems

Furthermore, this is what I think about you:

(X) Sorry dude, but I don't think it would work.

( ) This is a stupid idea, and you're a stupid person for suggesting it.

( ) Nice try, assh0le! I'm going to find out where you live and burn your house down!

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

#312

Post by rcMgD2BwE72F »

cactus2093 wrote: post #264
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 certainly seems like an unnecessarily oppressive stance to take, all effectively at the whim of your own personal aesthetics. There are tons of things that people do that I might deem not worth the environmental impact, like flying a hundred thousand miles a year for business, or eating beef, or driving to work every day, or having bigger houses and lawns than they need. Seems kind of arbitrary to allow most was…

>people are starting to vote with their wallets anyway

Did you mean "the rich"?

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

#313

Post by helmholtz »

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?

Why do HN comment threads always end up as Pedantry Pageants where all ye who dare comment must address all the fucking edge cases or be called out by the immediate first child comment about failing to do so. It's SO trite, predictable, wearisome and boring. It always follows the same pattern too. "Where do you draw the line?" "Who decides what's the truth?" Always the same fucking slippery slope fallacy. Every fucking time "Regulations" of any kind come up. I think the HN audience wears Being Anal as a kind of badge of honour.

To paraphrase Alan Watts slightly, do you know of a law that set everything to right? Let's just all sit around twiddling our thumbs eh? Since you obviously didn't really offer a counter solution.

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

#314

Post by [deleted] »

disruptalot wrote: post #212
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…

[deleted]

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

#315

Post by Nursie »

Aqua wrote: post #159
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…

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…

> Humanity will continue to require energy as it advances and banning anything "because it uses too much energy" is a ridiculous advice.

Not right now it's not. Not when we have constraints on how much CO2 we can pump into our atmosphere.

Right now, and I mean right now, when we're having huge problems de-carbonising the planet's energy supplies and are risking making life very uncomfortable for ourselves for decades or centuries to come, limiting energy use is actually one of the few levers we have to try to make a difference.

In this current situation, bringing online a whole new mid-sized country's worth of energy consumption for a financial instrument is ridiculous, and a huge own-goal for humanity.

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

#316

Post by JMTQp8lwXL »

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?

It's not about power. Well, not electrical power. It's about control over our currency. The argument is a trojan horse for an effective ban on the entire category of currencies not controlled by central authorities.

Without Proof of work, cryptocurrency would have never been established as a novel concept. Proof of work was the only rationale way to decide who should initially own how many units of the currency.

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

#317

Post by GhostVII »

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…

How about we just make people pay for their negative externalities, and let them do whatever they want. Tonnes of things people do are wasteful, no one needs a sports car either, but for some people it is worth paying extra for it. Why should it matter what I'm using my electricity for as long as I pay for the negative effects.

If you want to encourage other uses of electricity, subsidize them, don't just ban arbitrary forms of consumption.

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

#318

Post by adonovan »

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?

Exactly, that's how laws work: they express value judgements. Installing solar on the roof? Good, the people will help you pay for it. Earning a fortune? Bad, the people want a piece of that.

The laws set up the playing field, and the market responds to the incentives. There has never been any such thing as a "free" market, and it's a good thing too.

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

#319

Post by CarlBeek »

rfd4sgmk8u wrote: post #262
CarlBeek wrote: post #192

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Here are a few of the reasons that come to mind as to why this transition has been taking us so long: * The design of the Beacon Chain is far more optimised than our initial designs for a PoS system * There are far more crypto-economic edge cases in a PoS system when compared to PoW * Software development is hard and time estimates are even harder * The use of a hybrid fork choice to balance safety and liveness trade…

* Its a technically flawed solution that now has so much hype, abandoning the idea would lead to further FUD, tarnishing the project's future direction. So we must go through the motions to appease the energy FUD warriors.

lol, Ethereum's Beacon Chain already been running since Dec 1. See https://beaconcha.in/ Please point me towards the flaws.

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

#320

Post by matheusmoreira »

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…

We're supposed to just ban uses of energy we don't like? Why not a complete and total ban on electricity consumption by the adtech industry? Surveillance capitalism does more damage to society than these little coins ever will.
Post reply on HN