Reading the discussion here, I think most people don't have a problem with PoS, but the transition from PoW to PoS. If you compare PoS with the dominant client-server model, it's significantly better! In the worst case, PoS can become a "client-server". PoS is transparent and you know that your smart contract will run exactly how it suppose to be executed. No FAANG types of problems.
Ethereum will use around 99.95% less energy post merge
331–340 of 1001 posts
Re: Ethereum will use around 99.95% less energy post merge
#332Good. 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?
I think the real problem is that there is no cost associated with emitting CO2 for the emitter even though it creates tremendous costs for the society in the long term. If there was a tax associated with the act of emitting CO2 itself (purpose of which could be to invest in green technologies) then the market could be the arbiter.
Re: Ethereum will use around 99.95% less energy post merge
#333> 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.
I think that depends on whether you think "at least" modifies the "99%" or "99% less energy"
Re: Ethereum will use around 99.95% less energy post merge
#334Earlier 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?
If Statistia is to be believed, Facebook consumes 22x less energy than Bitcoin. 5 vs 110 Terawatt hours. And Bitcoin is hardly used for any transactions, and its energy usage will increase linearly with BTC price. (If someone has a direct source that would be great. Statista is not good) Update: seems the FB figure is correct, for 2019: https://sustainability.fb.com/report-pages/renewable-energy/
I'm aghast that Facebook burns that much power to run what is basically a giant BBS. I guess mining all of our personal data must take up an outrageous number of computer cycles.
However, in Facebook's defense it's per-user per-transaction energy costs are going to be much lower than Bitcoin.
Re: Ethereum will use around 99.95% less energy post merge
#335Earlier quoted context omitted.
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…
But in the mean time the value is likely to have tanked, because if they can't trivially be traded for national currency, the interest in them will wither.
This is the thing that has always bugged me about cryptocurrency - people are only passionate about it because they want to make more traditional currency with it. Then they adopt this "decentralized" rhetoric. It's always felt hollow. If owning/trading bitcoin became a crime, it'd be done.
Ever since Dogecoin had a moment, there's now a million coins trying to engineer their own "moonshot".
This is on top of the security issues and of course the energy issues. Cryptocurrency is garbage.
Re: Ethereum will use around 99.95% less energy post merge
#336For the people who criticize as to why they've taken so long in shifting to a PoS model: consensus takes time, so does developing and testing something that definitively shouldn't go wrong. Also, there's the inherent issue with Proof-of-Stake that Proof-of-Work doesn't have: the initial distribution of the coin has to be wide enough before it could feasibly self-maintain a PoS shift without being immediately vulnerab…
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…
And by far the most significant hindrance to moving away from proof of work is that there a number of significant players who have a large economic interest in PoW. Ethereum was promising this move many years ago, but it always was an extraordinarily low priority.
There are a lot of people with perverse biases. Many of the comments enthusiastically defending Bitcoin are people who are sitting on BTC and have watched it get pummelled due to its ludicrous enormous-energy-for-something-that-does-nothing-for-humanity reality (seriously -- if I see one more chart comparing the entirety of the financial industry with Bitcoin. The former powers the entire world. The latter powers some speculators, criminals, and a minuscule number of legitimate transactions).
Re: Ethereum will use around 99.95% less energy post merge
#337Earlier quoted context omitted.
You people obsessed with reducing humanity’s energy usage are so tiresome. Anyone who actually cares about the well-being of humanity should be focused on increasing the amount of energy available. I want to climb the kardashev scale, not live in an eco-pod and eat bug burgers so I can scrounge every last joule.
What you want and the realities of our current world are two very, very different things.
Necessity is the mother of invention.
[edit] - downvotes because I used the word "mother" maybe? I don't understand this community.
Re: Ethereum will use around 99.95% less energy post merge
#338Earlier quoted context omitted.
> But good to see that Ethereum came to their senses and are serious about reducing the environmental impact they have. Is it not possible there's good reasons they didn't move to proof of stake sooner? "Came to their senses" seems to imply they had no good reasons.
This has been the plan for a long time. But this is like Google deciding to switch to Microsoft Windows, it's not something they can just decide to do one day. There's a process. It's a massive effort and hundreds of billions of dollars are on the line.
Kinda what I figured. Thanks for the response.
Re: Ethereum will use around 99.95% less energy post merge
#339Good. 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 arbitra…
> How about we just make people pay for their negative externalities, and let them do whatever they want.
Well, for one, because that tends to mean "rich folks and large companies can act with impunity, everyone else not so much".
For two, we actually do discriminate quite happily between different uses of things. Maybe it's OK to keep energy prices low for households, as a compromise, but not for crypto mining?
Re: Ethereum will use around 99.95% less energy post merge
#340> Several teams of engineers are working overtime to ensure that The Merge arrives as soon as possible, and without compromising on safety. Overworking your engineers will most definitely lead to compromises. But good to see that Ethereum came to their senses and are serious about reducing the environmental impact they have.
Only time will be able to arbitrate this one, but we have consistently pushed out time-lines to ensure that Ethereum remains safe. Ethereum core development definitely favours partition tolerance and safety over liveness.