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

381–390 of 1001 posts

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

#381

Post by Ono-Sendai »

tootie wrote: post #123
TechBro8615 wrote: post #84

I was fairly into the space in 2014-2016 but stopped paying attention the last few years. It seems like lots of theorized applications actually exist and have a proof-of-concept now. If I’m building a marketplace business in 2021, where I want to be “crypto-first” instead of relying on PayPal and Stripe Connect, where do I start? The marketplace sells access to resources with an off-chain ACL system. It facilitates t…

Realistically, you can't. Unless you want to be a very early adopter, no mainstream businesses are accepting payments in crypto. Techwise, Coinbase has a thing: https://commerce.coinbase.com/ But I've absolutely never seen it in the wild.

I use coinbase to accept crypto payments for virtual property here: https://substrata.info/parcel_auction_list

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

#382

Post by kietay »

helmholtz wrote: post #313
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?

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 fuck…

How is that an edge case? The OP said ban all POW crypto and the reply questions whether that is really a wise suggestion.

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

#383

Post by sva_ »

SwagtimusPrime wrote: post #342
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…

>but comes at the great cost that people who aren't already in the game won't be able to acquire Ether without basically paying cash for it. That's a weird dependence on fiat currencies for a 'decentralized ledger'. PoW is just as much depending on fiat currencies. You can't get electricity without paying for it, you can't get a mining rig without paying for it, etc. This is one of the more common critiques against P…

>This is one of the more common critiques against PoS and it just doesn't hold true at all.

Maybe I'm an edge-case (I don't think so), but I was able to use the hardware I already owned, and the electricity already included in my utilities bill to acquire enough Ether that would allow me to deploy a smart contract. That won't be possible anymore in the future. So you're factually wrong, at least in my case.

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

#384

Post by suikadayo »

kojoru wrote: post #373

Question from someone relatively clueless: Does that mean that NFTs also will use negligible amount of electricity once that's completely gone through?

Basically. Also, it's already possible to do NFTs with negligible amount using Immutable X layer 2 scaling solution on Ethereum - it's just that they seem to be doing it only for Gods Unchained right now. There will be even more other NFT scaling solutions.

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

#385

Post by DCKing »

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?

> If that's the case, who's the arbiter of what's "too much" power for a use case?

I see a lot of people replying with a slippery slope argument of this nature, which makes me think I should explain my argument better.

I'm not arguing that burning electricity alone is the problem. I'm arguing that burning electricity for the direct purpose of making a financial product is a problem for society, when 1) the financial product explicitly incentivizes burning up as much as you can to make more money and/or 2) burning up that energy can be alleviated by other technical solutions.

I'm not arguing that mining should be illegal. I'm saying the 'sale' of the results of that mining should be illegal. Using or making incandescent lightbulbs is not illegal, but the sale of them is banned or restricted in large portions of the world [1]. Less harmful alternatives exist, so sale is disincentivized, the world moves on.

This is not the government deciding how you spend energy resources. You can continue to mine all you want. But you shouldn't be rewarded for that.

One thing I should point out is that I recognize that an alternative solution for these incentives is to make electricity always so expensive that it costs more money in electricity spend to mine crypto than you can make money of it. Make electricity price depend on crypto price. Needless to say I don't see that working out :)

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phase-out_of_incandescent_ligh...

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

#386

Post by 533474 »

de_keyboard wrote: post #108
TechBro8615 wrote: post #84

I was fairly into the space in 2014-2016 but stopped paying attention the last few years. It seems like lots of theorized applications actually exist and have a proof-of-concept now. If I’m building a marketplace business in 2021, where I want to be “crypto-first” instead of relying on PayPal and Stripe Connect, where do I start? The marketplace sells access to resources with an off-chain ACL system. It facilitates t…

> If I’m building a marketplace business in 2021, where I want to be “crypto-first” instead of relying on PayPal and Stripe Connect, where do I start? Unless you are building a dark web market, why would you want to? It will be more convenient for the vast majority of users to pay with card or PayPal.

why does it have to be a dark-web market if blockchain payments are first class citizens? I suppose the general population isn't ready for decentralised payments yet or do you have another reason for such use-case generalization?

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

#387

Post by lancemurdock »

helmholtz wrote: post #313
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?

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 fuck…

just because you lack an understanding to rebuttal coherently doesn't render the argument useless.

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

#388

Post by austincheney »

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?

> who's the arbiter of what's "too much" power for a use case?

Congress, courts, Department of Energy.

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

#389

Post by mckeed »

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.

PoW is different because it's energy use for its own sake.

If carbon taxes go up, some things will no longer be worth spending energy on, but crypto mining is just competitive, so the value of mining will go up with the cost of energy and keep using as much energy as ever. The only thing that can stop it is reducing demand for the coins, which the government is not even trying to do yet.

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

#390

Post by AlchemistCamp »

helmholtz wrote: post #313
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?

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 fuck…

A more apt comparison might be burning fuel to mine copper, nickel and zinc out of the ground for coinage.
Post reply on HN