Ethereum will use around 99.95% less energy post merge • Hacker News Board

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

#451

Post by swensel » Tue, May 18, 2021, 4:47 PM UTC

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…

Doesn't the mining difficulty decrease then though without the massive mining farms, and thus the electricity required decreases? I'm not an expert in crypto mining.

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

#452

Post by lend000 » Tue, May 18, 2021, 4:48 PM UTC

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 an Orwellian take to want the government to tell you how you're allowed to use electricity. Is watching TV a waste of energy? How much energy goes into steaming Netflix?

If you want to target an externality of the free market, do it directly: simply tax emissions. This will guide the market towards greener energy generation and direct capital out of activities that produce emissions without generated value.

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

#453

Post by exo762 » Tue, May 18, 2021, 4:48 PM UTC

rfd4sgmk8u wrote: post #91

ETH wont, and shouldn't migrate to PoS. PoS is a scam -- a trick, a reinvention of existing corrupt economic models. It throws out the greatest part of decentralized cryptocurrencies -- trustless, independently verifiable, auto-adjusting to external conditions, hard to fake proof of work. It replaces it with shell games and chicanery. I am very pro proof of work. The energy usage is a good thing. We can deal with the…

> enough folks will ignore this and keep mining

Irrelevant. Well designed networks are pretty much isolated from whims of miners. Ethereum is one of them, Bitcoin is not. I'm speaking about 2 weeks difficulty re-targeting window vs single block window.

> It replaces it with shell games and chicanery.

Why do you perceive it like that? I would love to hear details.

Ethereum will use hybrid PoS. Where random number generation (deciding who will become next block producer) is separated from deciding who is in the pool of potential producers (anty-sybil defense). First will be decided with commit-reveal scheme unbiased with the use of VDFs, second - with PoS.

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

#454

Post by xur17 » Tue, May 18, 2021, 4:49 PM UTC

mckeed wrote: post #389

bko wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> 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.

That is not true. If the cost of energy increases, mining / hash rates will decrease. Miners are competing, and the limit to the price they will pay for electricity is the value of the cryptocurrency they are earning for the activity.

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

#455

Post by takeda » Tue, May 18, 2021, 4:49 PM UTC

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?

> 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?

Yep, I hate to say it, but even FB is more useful compared to BTC. No one uses BTC for actual payment but to hold a value. People holding BTC could just switch to MtG cards and saved tons of energy without losing any benefits that they are currently using.

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

#456

Post by exo762 » Tue, May 18, 2021, 4:50 PM UTC

luka-birsa wrote: post #433

Fully support this, as PoW protocols - from an efficient market perspective - consume as much as they are currently worth to mine, which would mean that if we believe that the value of BTC will go up (in line with past increases, for orders of magnitude) then also the consumption of power will go up just as much. When BTC hits 250K per coin next year, expect 5x as much energy consumption to what it does use today. At…

PoW also implies large inflation, which pays for the security of the network. With PoS you can reduce issuance greatly, while staying safe.

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

#457

Post by capableweb » Tue, May 18, 2021, 4:50 PM UTC

rmtech wrote: post #200

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…

Proof-of-work cryptocurrencies are in the process of banning themselves. All that wasted energy is paid for by the holders, and proof-of-stake is just more financially attractive. No government intervention is required IMO.

> All that wasted energy is paid for by the holders

Could you explain me what energy is "wasted" in Proof-of-Work and also how the people currently holding the cryptocurrency is paying for that "waste"?

AFAIK, the same number of blocks are made no matter how many transactions are being made or how many holders there are (or how much each holder "holds"), so the energy consumption of Bitcoin remains more or less the same during an hour, only slowly rising as more miners get on-boarded. But the energy consumption of those brought online remains the same over the lifetime of the miner instance itself.

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

#458

Post by junseth » Tue, May 18, 2021, 4:50 PM UTC

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…

What if you simply don't know enough to not know that you're both wrong and being lied to by the ETH marketing team? Would you be embarrassed that you believed rhetoric? Probably means you would be easily susceptible to most conspiracy theories.

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

#459

Post by jraph » Tue, May 18, 2021, 4:50 PM UTC

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…

I don't know if that was their intent, but I would actually like a good answer to your parent's question to have a strong argument for backing OP's proposition, which I'd like to happen.

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

#460

Post by exo762 » Tue, May 18, 2021, 4:52 PM UTC

derivagral wrote: post #233

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…

You are on point. The solution is (and people do it today) don't run backup nodes, or you will risk getting slashed. Your penalty for missing your vote is very mild - basically not earning the reward for the round.