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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

#321

Post by jedimastert »

gpm wrote: post #251
selfhoster11 wrote: post #201

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

I think the proposal here is very simple. Pass a law against proof of work crypto currencies, don't let perfect be the enemy of good, and deal with the next big waste of power when it comes about by passing a law about it. Don't address of any the things that you are proposing need addressing, because they don't need to be addressed in the same law, or really addressed right now at all. The law doesn't need to try an…

> don't let perfect be the enemy of good

I don't think this applies to laws. In fact, I'd claim the opposite. Laws are something you REALLY want to get right

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

#322

Post by chii »

Nursie wrote: post #286
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.

> If you want less carbon burned, tax carbon. What if we want to decide that we want to minimise carbon, but some use of energy is preferable (for instance consumer/home use) to bootstrapping new financial products?

> but some use of energy is preferable

and that's where the price signals what is preferable. The correct allocation of energy should be based on the price people are willing to pay for the energy. Like any other commodity.

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

#323

Post by shiado »

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?

HN embodies this weird upper class environmentalist fascism where they proudly pick and choose what the plebes should be allowed to do with their lives based on totally logically inconsistent environmental reasons. The Musk thing was so funny for this. "No you plebes should have no recourse or experimentation against a fiat system it's bad for the environment, now don't mind me driving my Tesla around to do things like shop at expensive stores in my gated community or just kick it on the weekend doing a road trip in my TOTALLY ENVIRONMENTALLY NECESSARY electric vehicle that uses electricity from my wall socket not derived from fossil fuels at all which was not mined from not dubious sources whose environmental impact is totally not cool". I can't imagine where this ideology will land but I imagine the scope will expand greatly outside of PoW cryptocurrencies. Pretty soon commenters here will be scolding your for turning up your graphics settings in AAA games but only if you're poor and your house is in a dump that doesn't have a renewable grid.

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

#324

Post by X6S1x6Okd1st »

sva_ wrote: post #277

The minimum amount of Ether to be eligible to stake is 32 Coins, so it appears that last year in June, about 120k addresses would've met that criterion[0]. That probably changed by now, I'd assume the number to be higher as more people set up 'mining rigs'. That's at least a larger number than I would've guessed. I wonder how many people/entities are behind those addresses. On a side note, I have mixed feelings about…

I too have been skeptical of PoS, but IMO the thinking behind it has gotten better and better and there are pretty large chains that have been running without compromise.

Thankfully with ETH 2.0 the cost of publishing data on the chain will drop dramatically (there will be ~63x increase in throughput of publishing data, not transactions) so contract creation should be cheaper.

But really if you are interested in the space it might make sense to just publish on an L2 like polygon.

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

#326

Post by kerng »

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 agree that this is good - the world probably only needs one blockchain that is secured by PoW for the most fundamental use cases.

Ethereum will drive and that is good - but it solves different problems compared to Bitcoin.

In regards to banning PoW, sounds like the net neutrality discussions honestly... so to me that does not make sense for the same reasons.

And here is the kicker, because its permissionless, it can't be stopped.

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

#327

Post by chmike »

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…

> ban trade of PoW cryptocurrencies

That might cause a financial crash of the cryptocurrency market, with the trust issues, etc. It wouldn't be wise.

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

#328

Post by micropresident »

CarlBeek wrote: post #227
fvdessen wrote: post #189

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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/13849380897480417…

Yeah, and the way they are issuing rewards means there's an incentive to split your validation across multiple nodes to increase your changes at getting rewards. Each one of these costs electricity to run both in terms of bandwidth and electricity.

And other methods introduce the possibility of stake grinding.

BOTH converge to the same energy usage as mining.

OTOH, the legacy financial system is significantly more energy intensive for a given financial network value. You don't think banks and wars in the middle east to maintain the value of the network have an environmental impact?

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

#329

Post by djrhails »

sva_ wrote: post #277

The minimum amount of Ether to be eligible to stake is 32 Coins, so it appears that last year in June, about 120k addresses would've met that criterion[0]. That probably changed by now, I'd assume the number to be higher as more people set up 'mining rigs'. That's at least a larger number than I would've guessed. I wonder how many people/entities are behind those addresses. On a side note, I have mixed feelings about…

Frankly, right now anyone who isn't already in the game isn't able to acquire Ether without paying for it.

Mining at a rate necessary to get any reasonable amount of Ether is a huge investment, and is already out of reach for the average person. Setting your desktop computer to mine definitely won't pay for your small smart contract.

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

#330

Post by GhostVII »

Nursie wrote: post #286
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.

> If you want less carbon burned, tax carbon. What if we want to decide that we want to minimise carbon, but some use of energy is preferable (for instance consumer/home use) to bootstrapping new financial products?

Subsidize certain usages of electricity then. Or pay for the first x units of electricity for each household.
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