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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

#581

Post by okareaman »

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?

I know something about addiction so to me Bitcoin enthusiasts sound like alcoholics who justify their drinking by saying "many people drink and doctors say a little drinking is good for you so lay off me." The fact that I couldn't even criticize Bitcoin's energy usage on HN util Elon Musk came out against it reinforces my opinion that it's an addiction. I imagine Bitcoin is a game like poker with a bluffing and holding strategy. Bitcoin as it is currently played has many addicted to it without regard to disastrous environmental consequences.

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

#582

Post by hanniabu »

scsilver wrote: post #568
mmmmmbop wrote: post #563

Could somebody help me understand the valuation of Ether? Let's assume for a second that future developments in the the Ethereum protocol really unlock the widespread use of distributed apps, and herald a new technological era. As far as I understand, Ethereum optimists are betting that then people will be forced to buy Ether to participate in this Internet of distributed apps, driving the price higher. In this (opti…

People are buying it now to run apps making money off of defi. Binance has their own network thats growing similarly. Both do have a huge amount of speculators. There are other up and coming complements to the market aswell including Polkadot. Some like ethereum for its maturity and dev team.

Imo Polkadot is "obsolete" now with Ethereum moving forward with a rollup-centric roadmap since L2 rollups are pretty much the same as parachains.

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

#583

Post by exo762 »

mmmmmbop wrote: post #563

Could somebody help me understand the valuation of Ether? Let's assume for a second that future developments in the the Ethereum protocol really unlock the widespread use of distributed apps, and herald a new technological era. As far as I understand, Ethereum optimists are betting that then people will be forced to buy Ether to participate in this Internet of distributed apps, driving the price higher. In this (opti…

Re: valuation. The biggest contributing factor is speculation. I think it dwarfs every other possible factor. The second biggest one - fees are paid in ETH, and fees will continue to be paid in ETH. More, EIP-1559 will actively decrease amount of ETH in circulation by requiring miners to burn ETH to include transactions via base-fee mechanism.

Re: new chain / forking. Just network effect. Ethereum currently secures huge amount of value in DeFi. Any new network will not have those funds in it. There are also stablecoins. If blockchain-native assets (BTC, ETH, DAI etc) can be "doubled" by forking (e.g. BTC to BTC+BCH) it's not possible for fiat-backed assets such as USDC, USDT, EURc etc. Issuing bank has to pick a side of the fork.

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

#584

Post by wmf »

mmmmmbop wrote: post #563

Could somebody help me understand the valuation of Ether? Let's assume for a second that future developments in the the Ethereum protocol really unlock the widespread use of distributed apps, and herald a new technological era. As far as I understand, Ethereum optimists are betting that then people will be forced to buy Ether to participate in this Internet of distributed apps, driving the price higher. In this (opti…

There are already new Ethereum-compatible blockchains like Avalanche but they're missing out on the network effects that exist on the original Ethereum chain.

The only use of crypto is to get rich by being an early adopter. It's easy to design a new system that doesn't benefit early adopters but no one will care about it.

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

#585

Post by aqme28 »

leishman wrote: post #574

Proof of Stake is already how our current financial system works. The people with the most money make the decisions. Proof-of-Work is provably resistant to this, as evidenced by the 2017 blocksize debate where almost every large miner and bitcoin company wanted to change the protocol and it was fought off through grassroots efforts. A PoS currency will be controlled by a cabal of US financial institutions, and indire…

I am not convinced that PoW is immune to those pressures or even resistant to it. The people with capital control the mining.

At least the environmental problems are reduced with PoS

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

#587

Post by nscalf »

mtlynch wrote: post #557
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 (A…

They're going to buy carbon credits to offset the carbon emissions derived from using the network, then lock them away so they can't trade them off at a later time. That is definitely some marketing lingo tied around "we buy carbon credits".

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

#588

Post by fabioyy »

leishman wrote: post #574

Proof of Stake is already how our current financial system works. The people with the most money make the decisions. Proof-of-Work is provably resistant to this, as evidenced by the 2017 blocksize debate where almost every large miner and bitcoin company wanted to change the protocol and it was fought off through grassroots efforts. A PoS currency will be controlled by a cabal of US financial institutions, and indire…

people with money can buy mining factories and make decisions anyway.

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

#589

Post by hanniabu »

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…

> It's a shame more people don't know about it

It's a shame people don't understand that there's multiple aspects. Ethereum is much more decentralized, secure, have more dev mindshare, better community, tooling, and ecosystem. Let's also not forget that Algorand is powered by and centralized around team-run nodes.

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

#590

Post by DennisP »

kevindong wrote: post #498

> 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.

It's an average for the network, not an actual expense you pay to run a transaction. Stakers are the ones mainly using that energy. If you're just a regular user and send a transaction, you just spend the tiny bit of energy needed to make a cryptographic signature and transmit it.
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