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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

#491

Post by kd0amg »

sva_ wrote: post #383
SwagtimusPrime wrote: post #342

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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.

You definitely are an edge case if you were already paying your utility bills in cryptocurrency. Otherwise, you spent fiat currency to bootstrap your use of Etherium.

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

#492

Post by agloeregrets »

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?

"If there is a clear and obvious better with minimal impact." It's just that simple.

We make choices like this all the time. Here in the US we set CARB rules to slow emissions but we don't just ban old cars even though that would be better for the environment. Grey is okay in laws if the black and white bit behind it is clear! (Reduce emissions if possible with least possible impact on people.) Otherwise you will never be able to improve anything until the harmful methods have grown too much.

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

#493

Post by eyezick »

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…

Yup and accordingly PoS devs have explicitly stated this incentivizes stakers to be spread out, and not only on infrastructure but software, as there are multiple client implementations.

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

#494

Post by meowkit »

citilife wrote: post #485
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…

Bitcoins "power consumption" has two aspects - mining and processing transactions. The power consumption used for mining (or processing) is directly correlated to the relative earning potential - i.e. bitcoin price - power cost. Mining takes up the vast majority of the computation(s) and mining bitcoin should end somewhere between 2040 and 2050. That is to say, it's self correcting. If the price of energy increases,…

This is a really weak argument. The better argument is we shouldn’t tell people how to use energy they purchase and to tax consumption of it.

> innovation will take place and more energy will be developed.

This has way too many assumptions baked in. Increased demand will not guarantee a clean supply, nor does it guarantee technological progress in performance of efficiency.

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

#496

Post by throw1234651234 »

michael_vo wrote: post #100
throw1234651234 wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You don't double your money - at that point the network is compromised and nobody wants your coins. It's a guaranteed way to destroy Ethereum's value, but the only incentive to do it is to troll. Not too many entities globally looking to spend that much for a laugh, even if they could get the necessary funds in liquid form AND manage not to drive up price with their buy orders.

Perhaps state actors who can print free money would be interested in performing these attacks. Say if a coin was owned predominantly by citizens of one country or if the countries' infrastructure was running on ETH technologies. Like suppose the banking system was running on ETH. Or if Colonial Pipelines used ETH.

I can elaborate on any point if interested, but this is covered in the parent.

1. They would drive the price up way past market price in an attempt to make such a large purchase. The cost of a large, rapid purchase is far, far from market price. Only a fraction of the market is willing to sell at current price.

2. If a country wanted to run on Ethereum, they could clone it, since they are giving up the benefits of a GLOBAL system when they take it over.

Lmk if you have any questions. Pretty interesting topic given the insane ETH valuation atm, in contrast to, say, Algorand. Network and first move effects, I guess.

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

#497

Post by fredfoobar »

tenacious_tuna wrote: post #489
fredfoobar wrote: post #477

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, nope. Consider the amount of energy wasted right now and also in similar "industries". https://bitcoinmagazine.com/business/bitcoin-uses-less-than-...

To me, this says those other "similar 'industries'" should *also* be regulated in this way. We shouldn't excuse bitcoin just because there's other worse offenders, we should address the entire sector. I'll phrase it this way: do high-frequency-trading and coin-mining contribute positively to the world as a whole? Are they producing goods that improve the standard of living on a global scale, tangible or otherwise? Ar…

Sorry, it was more for your "opinion" on PoW, not the carbon tax.

> This would immediately make unproductive energy use (cough POW crypto cough) a lot less profitable,

You seem to have just one target in mind that would get hit. Clearly you haven't analyzed the full extent of a "carbon tax" and your following statement seemed very naive. That said, I'm all FOR carbon taxes, it is actually good for Bitcoin and the world.

I don't think there will be a LOT of PoW cryptos, there will be one (or two at most) winner and the others will use a variation of Proof of Proof (by saving state on a PoW chain). I also think that the energy usage curve will plateau soon-ish and energy usage will be somewhat constant or start trending down gradually (as the rewards are tapering off too).

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

#498

Post by kevindong »

> If energy consumption per-transaction is more your speed, that’s ~35Wh/tx

The improved energy consumption is still a lot. For reference, a 2019 16" MacBook Pro has a 100 Wh battery. In other words, 3ish transactions would fully drain such a laptop's battery.

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

#499

Post by gvhst »

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…

In my mind its not about figuring out the edge cases, its more about building a framework in which tradeoffs can be analyzed, debated, and mindfully considered before drafting legislation. In order to do this there might need to be a few conversations that some may consider pedantic.

I will say that given the text based medium of HN, it can be hard to gauge whether one wants to have a mindful discussion or if one is just trying to mindlessly ding a poster.

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

#500

Post by seph-reed »

RivieraKid wrote: post #270
focom wrote: post #2

So with PoS, we recreate a system where a few rich pool have decision over the network. Can someone enlighten me on how this is different from the current fiat system?

In our current system, decisions are made democratically - you vote politicians, who choose central bankers, who make the decisions.

On the scale between a full democracy and a full oligarchy, what you're describing would be a "representative democracy."

Unfortunately, our representatives don't really represent us, so we're much closer to oligarchy than democracy.

Also, a full democracy it terrible. It's basically the equivalent of facebook... having representatives who's full time job is to be knowledgable is much better than giving everyone an equal say on everything.

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