Ethereum will use around 99.95% less energy post merge

Post by [deleted] » Tue, May 18, 2021, 8:12 PM UTC

fredfoobar wrote: post #638

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

There's a whole book written about the history of this: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/57429394-the-blocksize-w... "Roughly 90% of the hash power once threatened to change the rules of #Bitcoin believing the users didn’t matter in the decision. The users spun up 10s of thousands of full nodes & told them to go f*ck themselves." [1] [1] https://twitter.com/TheCryptoconomy/status/13940065488763084...

Post by viscanti » Tue, May 18, 2021, 8:14 PM UTC

EugeneOZ wrote: post #763

vbuterin wrote: post #719

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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…

With PoS one can just buy _governance_, that's all. All you need to have more influence on (PoS-based) Etherium is a huge amount of money. More power to money-bags! So “fresh” idea :)

Post by imtringued » Tue, May 18, 2021, 8:15 PM UTC

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?

Post by EugeneOZ » Tue, May 18, 2021, 8:17 PM UTC

grubles wrote: post #765

EugeneOZ wrote: post #763

Earlier quoted context omitted.

With PoS one can just buy _governance_, that's all. All you need to have more influence on (PoS-based) Etherium is a huge amount of money. More power to money-bags! So “fresh” idea :)

It shouldn't be much of a surprise to learn that Vitalik is part of the Ethereum Foundation which controls the trademark to Ethereum as well as all of the popular social media channels (r/ethereum, @ethereum twitter account, ethereum.org domain). Ethereum is the illusion of decentralization.

Post by shiftingleft » Tue, May 18, 2021, 8:19 PM UTC

intotheabyss wrote: post #774

simias wrote: post #650

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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…

I can't believe this blatant denialism still exists on HN despite the fact that Ethereum has a thriving defi ecosystem. I can get a loan peer to peer today with my ETH in a stablecoin and yet you say there's no there there? Right....