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

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

#611

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

TarasBob wrote: post #160

TechBro8615 wrote: post #84

I was fairly into the space in 2014-2016 but stopped paying attention the last few years. It seems like lots of theorized applications actually exist and have a proof-of-concept now. If I’m building a marketplace business in 2021, where I want to be “crypto-first” instead of relying on PayPal and Stripe Connect, where do I start? The marketplace sells access to resources with an off-chain ACL system. It facilitates t…

This is a great solution called zk-rollup (zero knowledge rollup) https://zksync.io/ It is just as secure as the base chain (unlike polygon) and has low fees and has been live for the past few months. This is a perfect solution to simple payments. The difference between optimistic rollups and zero knowledge rollups is that you can’t deploy arbitrary smart contracts to zk rollup, it only supports a limited set of use…

Also zkSync has general EVM compatibility coming in a few months

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

#612

Post by [deleted] » Tue, May 18, 2021, 6:17 PM UTC

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…

[deleted]

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

#613

Post by sunsu » Tue, May 18, 2021, 6:17 PM UTC

incrudible wrote: post #605

leishman wrote: post #592

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Wrong. NODEs (individual network participants) enforce the rules, not miners.

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

#614

Post by leishman » Tue, May 18, 2021, 6:17 PM UTC

8note wrote: post #602

leishman wrote: post #594

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

It's very relevant. Mining is very easy to geographically diversify. PoS coins will almost all be controlled by US based custodians subject to US regulations. PoS coins will be controlled by the US financial industry at the end of the day

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

#615

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

defaultname wrote: post #336

CarlBeek wrote: post #192

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Here are a few of the reasons that come to mind as to why this transition has been taking us so long: * The design of the Beacon Chain is far more optimised than our initial designs for a PoS system * There are far more crypto-economic edge cases in a PoS system when compared to PoW * Software development is hard and time estimates are even harder * The use of a hybrid fork choice to balance safety and liveness trade…

And by far the most significant hindrance to moving away from proof of work is that there a number of significant players who have a large economic interest in PoW. Ethereum was promising this move many years ago, but it always was an extraordinarily low priority. There are a lot of people with perverse biases. Many of the comments enthusiastically defending Bitcoin are people who are sitting on BTC and have watched…

> Does nothing for humanity

Really? If that energy consumption problem wasn't there, what advantages does Ethereum have over Bitcoin? Would it even exist, since it offers many of the same features?

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

#616

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

colordrops wrote: post #595

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

Controlling the mining doesn't allow you to control much about how transactions work.

The network majority decides everything, including how transactions work, how many coins there are, what the block size is...

The prospect that there's only ever going to be 21 million Bitcoin is ensured by nothing except majority opinion. It's not inconceivable that this will be relaxed in the future and Bitcoin will have a "Bitcoin Classic" fork where old rules are enforced. This could happen if, for instance, transaction fees don't make up for miner majority rewards.

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

#617

Post by random_kris » Tue, May 18, 2021, 6:19 PM UTC

TechBro8615 wrote: post #84

I was fairly into the space in 2014-2016 but stopped paying attention the last few years. It seems like lots of theorized applications actually exist and have a proof-of-concept now. If I’m building a marketplace business in 2021, where I want to be “crypto-first” instead of relying on PayPal and Stripe Connect, where do I start? The marketplace sells access to resources with an off-chain ACL system. It facilitates t…

If you want to use microlayments, payment processing checkout the btcpayserver and Bitcoin lightning Network.

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

#618

Post by leishman » Tue, May 18, 2021, 6:19 PM UTC

x4e wrote: post #608

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.

PoS will be controlled by US-based custodians, which certainly have a tremendous incentive to siphon as much value from the currency as possible.

PoW has a much more diversified set of actors with competing interests, which makes it much more difficult to change the rules. This is a feature not a bug.

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

#619

Post by serial_dev » Tue, May 18, 2021, 6:19 PM UTC

bhandziuk wrote: post #114

h4kor wrote: post #13

> Several teams of engineers are working overtime to ensure that The Merge arrives as soon as possible, and without compromising on safety. Overworking your engineers will most definitely lead to compromises. But good to see that Ethereum came to their senses and are serious about reducing the environmental impact they have.

I think they're being hyperbolic. "we're working really hard to make it happen"

Yes, I would not read much into it. In the end, writing "We were sort of working on it at a reasonable pace, you know, work life balance is more important to our developers than finishing a month earlier" just doesn't have the same ring to it :)

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

#620

Post by greyhair » Tue, May 18, 2021, 6:20 PM UTC

bcrosby95 wrote: post #259

throwkeep wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Overtime != overwork. You've probably programmed something, at some point, where you were excited to work on it from morning to night? Where you lose track of hours, forget to eat meals and completely in the zone? That could easily be the case with these engineers, working on such a historical project and consequential update.

I have. My whole team at once? Not really. Unless management is really vigilant, when people are working overtime everyone on the team feels pressure to do the same.

I have been in that zone for two or three day stretches, but never beyond, and never in sync with a full team. I have experienced two forms of team wide over-time in my career. The first lasted (for me) about seven months, then I quit. I couldn't take in anymore and the project (large team, 150 people) was on fire. That was completely unsustainable. The second form was a periodic event that happened every two years when we released a new silicon design (chip vendor). The day that the first silicon was mounted onto boards began a cycle of ten to twelve days, 14 hours a day, lunch and dinner being one hour status briefings. All hands on deck. At the end of those ten or twelve days, either the silicon was fully validated, or all its known flaws were identified. And everybody on the team took a couple days off to breath. That was sustainable because it was infrequent, planned, and closed ended. I went through four of those cycles. They were exhausting and thrilling at the same time. And thankfully, infrequent and closed ended. There was always a light at the end of the tunnel.