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

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

#541

Post by OOPMan » Tue, May 18, 2021, 5:35 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…

There is a good reason n-gate exists and endlessly mocks the HN comments

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

#542

Post by reedjosh » Tue, May 18, 2021, 5:35 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…

POW guarantees distributed security better than any other currency so far. POS relies on a _relatively_ small number of nodes to run the network.

POW is more _government_ proof than any other method. To many the threat of central bank digital currencies is justification enough for POW's energy consumption.

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

#543

Post by everfree » Tue, May 18, 2021, 5:36 PM UTC

helen___keller wrote: post #106

roel_v wrote: post #75

Maybe this is a good time and place to ask - let's say I want to buy something using Ethereum. Is it correct that when I look at, say, https://ycharts.com/indicators/ethereum_average_transaction_... , you have to pay USD 20 just as payment fees? I wrote off Bitcoin as a payment mechanism a long time ago because of this (although it seems BTC tx costs are now lower than ETH?), is this the direction tx costs for all cr…

To directly answer your question: currently, ethereum has the same fundamental scaling problems that bitcoin has (limited global throughput) Bitcoin's attempted solution on this front is off-chain scaling via lightning network. As far as I can ascertain, this has had highly limited adoption. Eth's attempted solution on this front is sharding. I can't claim to be an expert in this, but from my understanding after proo…

Ethereum has set aside sharding temporarily to focus on PoS. The plan to scale in the short-term is to use technology called "rollups" which put a transaction's signature data off-chain while keeping its data on-chain, effectively "batching" a bunch of transactions into one.

https://ethereum-magicians.org/t/a-rollup-centric-ethereum-r...

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

#544

Post by webXL » Tue, May 18, 2021, 5:37 PM UTC

barrkel wrote: post #222

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.

Government is made out of people. If the people don't want the economy oriented around energy being put into finding hashes, they have the right to vote.

The government is made out of people and if history has taught us anything, power corrupts those people. Income inequality has only risen since the last financial crisis. Decentralization of money is the whole point of this exercise, and many believe Proof of Work is superior to Proof of Stake because work is actually scarce. Once you make it cheap to transact, that opens up all sorts of attacks (spam, phishing) and devaluation. Since PoS can be copied very easily, many corrupt governments will do just that.

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

#545

Post by seniorivn » Tue, May 18, 2021, 5:40 PM UTC

jude- wrote: post #206

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…

More feasible take: ban the trade of PoW coins that cannot be shown to have been mined via green energy.

it's all bullshit

Just ban people doing bad things, like all of them.

Problem solved

All problems solved

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

#546

Post by xutopia » Tue, May 18, 2021, 5:41 PM UTC

So... how much money will someone make from mining post merge? Will people be able to make money?

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

#547

Post by stickac » Tue, May 18, 2021, 5:41 PM UTC

It will also make it 99.95% less resistant to censorship.

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

#548

Post by truth_seeker » Tue, May 18, 2021, 5:42 PM UTC

Can someone point out what exactly changed at low level code to achieve this optimization in energy consumption or they altered the algorithm altogether ?

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

#549

Post by manx » Tue, May 18, 2021, 5:42 PM UTC

fredfoobar wrote: post #483

Everything in this universe is analogous to Proof of Work, it's the most natural system out there. If there is a base monetary layer for the internet, it should be Proof of Work based (and Bitcoin, because it's got the most work done to improve the technology + network effects).

Could you elaborate a bit? Why do you think that?

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

#550

Post by 8note » Tue, May 18, 2021, 5:43 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?

Burning energy to prove that you burned energy is not right. You can run cryptocurrency without requiring proof that burned electricity.

You don't need to worry about how much electricity was burned, only that it wasn't done in exchange for a plaque saying "I filled a swimming pool with gasoline, then lit it on fire"