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

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

#721

Post by matheusmoreira » Tue, May 18, 2021, 7:25 PM UTC

andrewla wrote: post #625

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…

> Proof of Stake is already how our current financial system works. This is a naive viewpoint. Ethereum (as a currency) is an "M0" token, like cash or Fed deposits. There's a lot of handwaving about bonds and whatnot, but essentially the Fed can create new money simply by changing numbers on a balance sheet, and they can make that money into folding money and change which they can issue. The banking system is a compl…

> The equivalent in the real world is a bunch of aircraft carriers and planes and bombs and people with big guns, which gives the ability to say (credibly) that it is a crime to forge dollars no matter who you are or where you live.

And yet people complain about cryptocurrency energy usage with a straight face!

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

#722

Post by armandillo » Tue, May 18, 2021, 7:26 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…

Proof of work is currently controlled by 3 companies in terms of hashpower and 1 in terms of hardware - Bitmain.

So, the absolute worst case for PoS is already pretty much the case for PoW.

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

#723

Post by X6S1x6Okd1st » Tue, May 18, 2021, 7:28 PM UTC

txsoftwaredev wrote: post #252

X6S1x6Okd1st wrote: post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If we are passing radical legislation that cuts across borders I'd much rather see a carbon/greenhouse gas tax.

We should impose a large tax on data centers for their massive energy usage to power such "valuable" resources like Twitter, Instagram and Facebook.

Who the fuck is gonna determine what is valuable?

A re-distributive carbon tax incentivizes efficiency, doesn't hit stuff like renewables and allows individuals to keep on choosing what they want to do with their life.

Just because you don't find facebook valuable doesn't mean that others feel the same way.

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

#724

Post by lancemurdock » Tue, May 18, 2021, 7:29 PM UTC

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…

i'll check back on this coin when its tokenomics have improved. I am not interested in something with 70% of the total supply not yet in circulation.

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

#725

Post by jerye » Tue, May 18, 2021, 7:31 PM UTC

wmf wrote: post #584

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.

I'm interested to know more about a system that doesn't benefit early adopters... Do you have any sources? Thanks :)

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

#726

Post by DickingAround » Tue, May 18, 2021, 7:32 PM UTC

simias wrote: post #650

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…

It's not like cryptocurrencies achieved any of their goals so far anyway. If it's about facilitating pyramid schemes and creating a worldwide casino we might as well do it efficiently and without wasting insane amounts of resources. I'm personally very happy for PoS and hope that it'll be successful, I would be a lot less annoyed with cryptocurrency bullshit if it wasn't so wasteful. With proof-of-stakes it basically…

What do you mean? We totally got what we wanted; we have a deflationary currency we trade for goods and services.

I'm 100% serious here; it's been working fine for quite a number of years. The fiat conversion is pretty noisy but BTC on average goes up in value in fiat terms at a fast pace. BTC is easy to turn it into stuff. No one has ever censored my transactions or asked for ID. Even if you buy something really expensive or totally illegal. It has literally already worked. It started working the day that guy bought a pizza and it hasn't stopped working.

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

#727

Post by eyezick » Tue, May 18, 2021, 7:32 PM UTC

vbuterin wrote: post #719

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 think you're conflating _consensus_ and _governance_; the two are quite different. It's not PoW vs PoS that allows a chain to resist a coordinated attempt by elites to force a protocol change, it's users personally verifying the chain (and so automatically rejecting chains that violate the rules even if >51% of PoW/PoS nodes support those chains). So no, PoS is not "how our current financial system works". Our curr…

I'd further add on to say PoS has the benefit of being able to eliminate bad actors unilaterally. You can't stop anyone from attacking a PoW chain over and over again. Attacking a PoS chain is much riskier as the attacker's stakes are held on chain and are at the mercy of the community who uses the network.

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

#728

Post by ac29 » Tue, May 18, 2021, 7:33 PM UTC

nextaccountic wrote: post #634

vmception wrote: post #628

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Correct, the US Federal Reserve is a Proof of Stake system. Members earn 6% dividends for the last 100 years, and this was to entice them to join the system at all. Just pointing out that the idea of an omnipotent US government is a fairly new concept, and it must incentivize and entice people to join its payment network as opposed to other private ones. The private networks for final settlement are becoming more int…

> Members earn 6% dividends for the last 100 years, and this was to entice them to join the system at all. Can you tell more about this? Specially the "and this was to entice them to join the system at all." part.

> Why did the Federal Reserve Act initially offer such a generous dividend to member banks? It was essentially part of a marketing campaign. “At the time the Fed was not terribly popular with the banks, and they wanted to attract members,” said Allan Meltzer, professor of political economy at Carnegie Mellon University and a historian of the Federal Reserve. “They had to give up a major source of revenue, the charge they made for check clearing. Back then, if you received a check for $10, you might get back $9.50.” The dividend was seen as a way to entice banks into joining the Federal Reserve system.

from: https://newrepublic.com/article/116913/federal-reserve-divid...

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

#729

Post by matheusmoreira » Tue, May 18, 2021, 7:33 PM UTC

jereees wrote: post #718

matheusmoreira wrote: post #710

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Monero is closest to the original cryptocurrency dream: decentralized and private currency. It's most definitely not "bullshit".

How is that different from how Shiba Inu token works? Genuinely curious

Monero is an actual coin with a blockchain, mineable by normal people, low fees, good transaction speed and always on privacy features that actually work. Shib is just a meme token created to compete with dogecoin.

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

#730

Post by WanderPanda » Tue, May 18, 2021, 7:34 PM UTC

nootropicat wrote: post #691

swensel wrote: post #506

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is one thing I've been wondering about new projects that start with PoS. How do they have enough distribution of the coins in order for them to be resilient against attacks?

This is a good point and I think only ethereum has sufficient distribution. The sole advantage of PoW over PoS is distribution - miners sell, dumping the price, which is also likely to make other people to sell. Even many ethereum founders sold very low - Vlad Zamfir in particular sold ~100% below $20 (he tweeted about it, can't find it now). Ethereum had 6 years of PoW now - most likely nothing else can repeat its d…

> The time of PoW is visibly over.

Thanks for pointing this out! I never thought about this. To me the biggest long term threat to btc is the shift in block rewards from mined coins to transaction fees. I am assuming a possibly much smaller security budget available for “wasting energy”. But at that point it still might be enough as there is no network effect supporting new pow chains anymore, that could threaten btc security by having more sha hashpower.