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

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

#511

Post by exo762 » Tue, May 18, 2021, 5:21 PM UTC

fredfoobar wrote: post #397

stingraycharles wrote: post #363

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It seems like you’re insinuating that there are negative consequences to the PoS system, but leave it up to the reader to think really deep and understand what those consequences are. I’m not well versed into PoS systems, but just took a look at ethereum’s explanation and it sounded reasonable, but I’m not familiar with the details and trade-offs that are being made. Care to enlighten me what you’re referring to?

The negative consequences were mentioned in another comment: You should first get "well versed into PoS systems", The stakers (and their adjoints) can collude and decide to reorg the chain for a different outcome. This can be done indefinitely at no additional cost. In a PoW system, you not only have to expend capex for mining equipment, you hare further discouraged by the huge CONTINUED opex (energy) cost. The energ…

> The stakers (and their adjoints) can collude and decide to reorg the chain for a different outcome. This can be done indefinitely at no additional cost.

No, they can't. As a part of the attack they will have to produce a two different signatures for the same decision (block N has hash X). This is where slashing comes in - anyone can submit those signatures to the chain to slash signers.

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

#512

Post by whywhywhywhy » Tue, May 18, 2021, 5:21 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…

> Ban their trade because global society shouldn't accept rampant incentives to literally burn up energy

Videogames run GPUs at full capacity too, we should ban them too. No one NEEDS to pretend to be a cowboy for 100+ hours each across 36 million GPUs.

Actually maybe there should be a ban on computing power above mobile CPUs available to non-government bodies, if this really is so devastating to the environment we need to limit the amount of damage people can cause as individuals, why does a normal person need a GPU anyway when smart phone graphics should be enough.

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

#513

Post by fredfoobar » Tue, May 18, 2021, 5:22 PM UTC

aloer wrote: post #505

fredfoobar wrote: post #479

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Consider not rabbitholing into a narrative and understanding reality: https://bitcoinmagazine.com/business/bitcoin-uses-less-than-...

Bit of a weird argument they make there. Banking keeps the world spinning. What does bitcoin do, right now, to make this even remotely comparable?

Why is there such a strong status-quo bias among people I thought were technologists, and what do you guys defend? the banking system?? really?

Do you all remember the energy FUD that the internet got back in the late 90s [1]?

Please! lets not sleepwalk into another PoS system on the internet to replace the previous one.

[1] https://www.forbes.com/forbes/1999/0531/6311070a.html?sh=3e2...

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

#514

Post by Graffur » Tue, May 18, 2021, 5:23 PM UTC

LeftTriangle wrote: post #208

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…

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.

Who is working on this problem today?

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

#515

Post by seph-reed » Tue, May 18, 2021, 5:23 PM UTC

cblconfederate wrote: post #425

PoW was of course a naive system but this this PoS should really be called the "Oligarchy" because it takes us back to the past and very visibly separates the plebs from the aristocracy. PoW had an implicit requirement for a global supply chain of hardware and energy which (kind of) made political and geopolitical games more difficult. With PoS, doing politics no longer requires work, which could lead to geopolicical…

I'm on the PoW side. But you should note that PoW is also oligarchic in the sense that individuals have no ability to compete in terms of mining. The rich get richer is still a thing here.

That being said, PoS is very much a human centric valuation (rich peoples opinions being the value), so yes: politics and then war seem likely.

Pretty much every fiat currency has the same issues as PoS, where eventually war becomes the cheapest way to retain value.

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

#516

Post by rfd4sgmk8u » Tue, May 18, 2021, 5:23 PM UTC

jude- wrote: post #311

Your post advocates a (X) technical ( ) legislative (X) market-based ( ) vigilante approach to solving the double-spend problem in a decentralized cryptocurrency. Your idea will not work. Here is why it won't work. (One or more of the following may apply to your particular idea, and it may have other flaws which used to vary from state to state before a bad federal law was passed.) (X) Scammers can easily use it to d…

I love this! I know the original text, did you write this variant?

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

#517

Post by exo762 » Tue, May 18, 2021, 5:25 PM UTC

micropresident wrote: post #228

People seem to forget that this energy use is a consequence of miners wanting coins because of the subjective value of the reward. Even stakers can expend more money for a better chance at receiving the eth2 staking rewards. This will result in just as much energy use for a given reward value as Bitcoin. The question is if you can account for it. Eth2 propagandists are being very -- unintentionally -- dishonest about…

> Even stakers can expend more money for a better chance at receiving the eth2 staking rewards. This will result in just as much energy use for a given reward value as Bitcoin.

I think you are wrong. Staker pays in "time-cost of money", which is proportional to the stake size and in energy cost, which is pretty much constant (few watts). Your argument implies that there will be greater amount of stakers. That would be plausible if not for 32ETH minimal stake.

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

#518

Post by csomar » Tue, May 18, 2021, 5:25 PM UTC

I might be jumping the shark here, but I think the Ethereum "elite community" are probably going to get into a situation of "be careful what you wish for".

There is a reason why most of mining is happening in China, Iran, Libya and other "poor" countries. These countries have big players in mining but not in trading/legislation (except for China).

By creating a PoW crypto, you are able to do something really cool: You can move value (energy) out of a country, without having a connection with any institution either inside or outside. This happens in a permission-less, indirect manner.

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

#519

Post by 627467 » Tue, May 18, 2021, 5:25 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…

Government can already effectively (and is already inadvertently doing so) prevent mining by manipulating energy prices within it's jurisdiction. It does NOT mean that government can easily ban the use of PoW blockchains.

Miners will move to where is is profitable and will be ultimately incentivized to find cheaper (ultimately cleaner) means to mine.

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

#520

Post by seph-reed » Tue, May 18, 2021, 5:26 PM UTC

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?

The attack vectors on PoS are less logical than those of PoW.

With PoW, it's all just physics, energy, and math. With PoS it's rich peoples opinions and validation. An attack on PoS will likely be political... and politics tend to slip into war if there's not enough adults in the room.