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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

#551

Post by LudwigNagasena »

gpm wrote: post #251
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?

I think the proposal here is very simple. Pass a law against proof of work crypto currencies, don't let perfect be the enemy of good, and deal with the next big waste of power when it comes about by passing a law about it. Don't address of any the things that you are proposing need addressing, because they don't need to be addressed in the same law, or really addressed right now at all. The law doesn't need to try an…

> The law doesn't need to try and anticipate the actions that occur in the future

But that’s exactly what the law should do...

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

#552

Post by fredfoobar »

Graffur wrote: post #508
fredfoobar wrote: post #345

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Holy shit, lol. This is an insane take. Proof of Stake is NOT secure, the stakers can collude to reorganize the chain at almost no cost. This is like the exact system we tried to get away from, the USD system is also a Proof of Stake.

Where can I learn more about this?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qrwgYDAoZV0

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

#553

Post by 0134340 »

micropresident wrote: post #415
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…

It is a scam -- all current crypto is a scam for the same reason. One of the other things that people don't understand is that currency and government are inseparable. When you buy Eth (or any other crypto) you're buying into a new system of government. Do you want to be a citizen of that new government? What will they do for their citizens? Do they plan to build roads or anything else? Seigniorage should go to the p…

Currency and local government can be completely divorced and I think crypto will prove this in the future. I don't think governments will begin to care one way or another as long as they get theirs and taxes are paid. If you can score currency from around the globe and bring it home to a more local domain and pay in to the system where you live, they should have no problem with it.

And the validators, PoS anyway, use very little energy even compared to traditional coin minting.

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

#554

Post by everfree »

gruez wrote: post #6
sergioisidoro wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Current system is no different, as the hash power is related to how many computers you can afford to buy. This doesn't fix the problem but it does fix the environmental impact.

The difference is that with PoW you constantly have to do "stuff" (ie. buying equipment, running datacenters) or get left behind. PoS on the other hand you can just sit on your ass and wait for the $$$ to roll in.

This isn't really true. You also have to buy equipment and run specialized software to participate in PoS. It requires keeping a node connected to the internet with high uptime, and maintaining its software and hardware.

Plus, due to slashing, you are uniquely responsible for mistakes your validator makes. So, staking comes with both responsibilities and consequences for breaching them, just like any legal contract.

The fact that you can rent a turnkey cloud solution to do all this work for you and split the profits isn't really relevant to the argument IMO (I consider staking with Coinbase "renting cloud computing" in a specialized way).

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

#555

Post by jude- »

seph-reed wrote: post #515
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 become…

In PoW, the "rich" have to keep selling their coins to buy more dedicated mining equipment in order to stay competitive. And because PoW hasn't reached "optimum efficiency," there's still profits to be had by building better miners and cheaper power sources. Innovations here have positive downstream effects, since innovations in cheap renewable power and efficient chip fabs and designs have many applications beyond mining.

PoS, on the other hand, requires minimal extra work from the already-rich. They just sit on their butts getting richer.

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

#556

Post by andrewla »

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?

It's even easier than that -- all you have to do is get a stake and then brute force mine for an alternate reality where your stake is the sole decision maker for the DAG.

You can't really double-spend that way, but you can get a disproportionate amount of the shard rewards. In order to defend against this, other participants will also have to mine for a "more fair" alternate reality, so you end up getting a standstill where nobody can get economic advantage as long as the total power being devoted to preventing chain-shopping is greater than the amount spent on chain-shopping.

In the end the energy expenditure would likely be unchanged from the status quo, it would just be hidden behind a facade of inexpensive proof-of-stake validations that conceal the actual work being done to ensure that this is not abused. This way everyone can feel warm and fuzzy because there's no actual way to measure how much work is being done to keep the validation from being monopolized.

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

#557

Post by mtlynch »

tylercubell wrote: post #525

Algorand has been Proof of Stake for years (2019 MainNet launch) and it's actually carbon-negative [1]. It's a shame more people don't know about it. Its founder is a Turing-award-winning MIT professor (Silvio Micali) who solved the blockchain trilemma [2] with the Pure Proof of Stake consensus algorithm. The tech is leaps and bounds ahead of other cryptos. [1]: https://www.algorand.com/resources/news/carbon_negative…

That sounded interesting but I couldn't understand from the links how a blockchain can be carbon negative:

>To achieve a carbon-negative network, Algorand and ClimateTrade will implement a sustainability oracle which will notarize Algorand’s carbon footprint on-chain for each epoch (a set amount of blocks). With its advanced smart contracts, Algorand will then lock the equivalent amount of carbon credit as an ASA (Algorand Standard Asset) into a green treasury so that its protocol keeps running as carbon-negative.

I'm pretty familiar with the basics of cryptocurrency and blockchains, but the above paragraph makes almost no sense to me.

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

#558

Post by exo762 »

rfd4sgmk8u wrote: post #510
exo762 wrote: post #472

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The ethereum Miners will rebel I don't think miners can do anything about this. In the worst case, they coordinate to stop mining on N-1 block. But this requires an amazing level of coordination, plus network can directly bribe/reward next block producer by paying to `coinbase` address (real `coinbase`, not Armstrong's coinbase). > "The Merge" will introduce catastrophic bugs, 0-days will appear. This is why you ha…

testnets are great, but cannot approximate the economic impact of technical decisions as they have zero value. Just because it works on a testnet is not a good justification that it would work at scale on a chain worth billions.

I agree. Ropsten is the proof. Still, I'm fine with Ethereum moving fast and breaking things.

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

#559

Post by jude- »

exo762 wrote: post #393
crazypython wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can DDoS normal, non-validating nodes, and if they go offline, they can be unsure which chain is the true chain, because they were not around.. This means your laptop can never sleep, unlike in Bitcoin, where full nodes may go offline and catch up later. People who control stake can refuse to include (censor) transactions, as there is no market competition for transaction inclusion like in PoW. In PoW, if 51% of…

This is false. At least false for Ethereum's hybrid PoS. It uses Verifiable Delay Function as an element of random number generation process. One can look into number of rounds of VDF and treat them just the way they treat proof of work today. It can be compared to determine which chain is the longer one.

How long till we have a VDF ASIC that lets block producers fuck with this?
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