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

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

#601

Post by fredfoobar » Tue, May 18, 2021, 6:12 PM UTC

mckeed wrote: post #308

disruptalot wrote: post #212

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is one of those "Freakonomics" type ideas. On the surface this sounds like bitcoin's PoW use will simply stop. It's actually the entire opposite. When governments ban it, they go after sizeable, identifiable organizations running these operations, that is their only choice. These operations are optimized in their energy usage, because it's only in their interest to reduce their consumption relative to the value…

The idea was to ban trading, not mining. If Coinbase and all the other legitimate companies that facilitate crypto markets for U.S. citizens had to drop PoW coins it could tank the price significantly and set the coin mining industry back to when it wasn't such a huge problem for energy use and GPU supply. Speculation would move to PoS currencies and BTC would stay valuable, but would act more like an altcoin.

https://bisq.network/ exists, you can trade bitcoin p2p already.

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

#602

Post by 8note » Tue, May 18, 2021, 6:12 PM UTC

leishman wrote: post #594

fabioyy wrote: post #588

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

See my comment to another in the thread. Existing stakers can prevent new people from staking. Existing miners can't do this in a PoW system

New people can still vote for their governments to affect those systems.

The distinction feels irrelevant

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

#603

Post by witweb » Tue, May 18, 2021, 6:13 PM UTC

fabioyy wrote: post #588

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.

Please read up on UASF and Bitcoin. People can buy tons of mining factories, but if a very large amount of nodes start rejecting blocks and therefore the rewards, miners start to rethink their stance very fast. There is no discussion here, history proves it.

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

#604

Post by Rapzid » Tue, May 18, 2021, 6:14 PM UTC

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…

Smallish groups of consolidated power already control the future of the crypto currencies; see the migration to PoS.

Crypto has made very little(perhaps zero) progress toward any solution in decentralizing power.

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

#605

Post by incrudible » Tue, May 18, 2021, 6:14 PM UTC

leishman wrote: post #592

aqme28 wrote: post #585

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

The difference is that PoW is censorship resistant. Anybody can be a miner and existing miners cannot censor new miners. Performing new work is external to the network state. In PoS, existing stakers can prevent new stakers from registering. Very important distinction.

The network majority can enforce any rule, doesn't matter if it's PoW or PoS.

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

#606

Post by fredfoobar » Tue, May 18, 2021, 6:15 PM UTC

0134340 wrote: post #596

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).

And Stake is derived from Work. Some of you assume PoS exists within its own ecosystem. Even in PoW, the work is derived from previous works, ie, the work required to buy and build the hardware and pay for electricity, etc.

Yeah, now you are proposing a system that is going to be secured purely on that stake everyone acquired, THAT's the issue.

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

#607

Post by capableweb » Tue, May 18, 2021, 6:15 PM UTC

hanniabu wrote: post #589

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.

I don't think the initial "It's a shame more people..." is meant to make people forget about Ethereum. I think it's to signal that not a lot of people know about Algorand, and doesn't anything about other projects.

Since you seem to indicate that you know what you're talking about, care enough to make a proper argument? You say Ethereum is more decentralized, secure and better tooling, but you never actually make a cohesive argument, only giving a list of "reasons" without any backing. I'm mostly interested in why you think Ethereum is "more secure" than Algorand, and what threat model are you considering here even?

> Algorand is powered by and centralized around team-run nodes

Hm, I run a Algorand node but I don't work for the Algorand team. What do you mean that Algorand is run by team-run nodes really? How do you even know which node belongs to who in the first place?

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

#608

Post by x4e » Tue, May 18, 2021, 6:16 PM UTC

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…

POW just gives the power to whoever can purchase the most computing power. It also gives control of the network to those directly benefiting from high fees.

At least POS gives the power to those that actually have an interest and stake in the currency itself.

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

#609

Post by whyrusleeping » Tue, May 18, 2021, 6:16 PM UTC

leishman wrote: post #592

aqme28 wrote: post #585

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

The difference is that PoW is censorship resistant. Anybody can be a miner and existing miners cannot censor new miners. Performing new work is external to the network state. In PoS, existing stakers can prevent new stakers from registering. Very important distinction.

Its not really though, if the majority of PoW miners want to omit a certain miners blocks, they can. The protocol dictates that the chain created by the majority of mining power is the canonical one.

In the event that a censored party can create a heavier chain (has >50% of the mining power) then the argument that its more censorship resistant holds, but on the PoS side, you would be betting that not a single participant in the main chain included their new stake registration in their blocks. This is different than the PoW model as non-malicious nodes in PoW can still be part of the main chain. It's definitely not that cut and dry

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

#610

Post by lawn » Tue, May 18, 2021, 6:16 PM UTC

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…

> almost every large miner and bitcoin company wanted to change the protocol

If the miners really wanted to change the protocol, they would have done that. The exchanges would have followed, as they had declared that the longest chain would win, and that would be game over.

Instead the miners gave in to the perceived authority of the Core developers, who pinky promised to later raise the block size (which they backed away from).