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

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

#791

Post by leishman » Tue, May 18, 2021, 8:29 PM UTC

s7atic wrote: post #686

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…

Why do you believe a global PoS currency will be controlled by US actors? The US has a 10--20% share of global GDP. Regardless, history has proven that the most legitimate branch of a blockchain wins, irrespective of security model. It will not be the actor with the most hash power or stake. For reference, see the Justin Sun/STEEM drama. Vitalik Buterin has an interesting blog post on legitimacy: https://vitalik.ca/g…

Because they're all largely funded by U.S. based VC funds.

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

#792

Post by intotheabyss » Tue, May 18, 2021, 8:29 PM UTC

shiftingleft wrote: post #779

intotheabyss wrote: post #774

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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....

Is there any advantage over existing systems either for the lender or the debtor?

Huge advantages for both. For example, something that's only possible on a blockchain is a flashloan. This is where you can get a loan for any amount (liquidity provided) as long as you repay the full loan amount in the same block. This primitive alone allows for much higher velocities of money since value can be moved and repayed in a single block (on the order of 10 seconds).

All of the advantages of defi boil down to increases in velocity of money. For example you can deposit funds into a contract and receive a token that represents your liquidity position. You can then use this token in other applications. So now you have this composability of money which allows people to create new financial primitives.

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

#793

Post by svarog-run » Tue, May 18, 2021, 8:30 PM UTC

selfhoster11 wrote: post #215

de_keyboard wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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? Unless you are building a dark web market, why would you want to? It will be more convenient for the vast majority of users to pay with card or PayPal.

One reason that comes to mind is trying to be the change they want to see in the world. Cards and Paypal already have heaps of adoption.

The end user won't see a change in their cards though

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

#794

Post by _9omd » Tue, May 18, 2021, 8:31 PM UTC

leishman wrote: post #618

x4e wrote: post #608

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Yeah, I'm a big ETH holder, but this is honestly what worries me about the POS merge. I think the fact that Bitcoin miners have to sell to fund their operations is a nice feature and keeps them in a separate class from the custodians. Economic incentives that merge validators with custodians could create a feedback loop that concentrates too much power in the wrong places. That being said, ETH has a thriving DeFi ecosystem and a ton of smart people working on it, so I'm not betting against it.

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

#795

Post by jude- » Tue, May 18, 2021, 8:31 PM UTC

vbuterin wrote: post #737

fredfoobar wrote: post #638

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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...

That was about users' nodes being able to validate blocks; that's an orthogonal issue from PoW vs PoS.

Coins that no ones' nodes validate are worthless, aren't they?

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

#796

Post by wmf » Tue, May 18, 2021, 8:31 PM UTC

mmmmmbop wrote: post #665

seibelj wrote: post #573

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In the internet, the more websites and APIs exist, the greater the utility of the internet as a whole - the sum of its parts is worth more than each individually. With Ethereum, every time a new smart contract is added to Ethereum, the whole network becomes more useful, as each contract can communicate with each other. You can assemble new applications based on the building blocks of existing contracts.

Are the smart contracts not out in the open? Can you not just copy over the good/useful smart contracts as well?

You can copy the code but not the money. A distributed exchange with no traders isn't very useful, for example.

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

#797

Post by crazypython » Tue, May 18, 2021, 8:32 PM UTC

roel_v wrote: post #75

Maybe this is a good time and place to ask - let's say I want to buy something using Ethereum. Is it correct that when I look at, say, https://ycharts.com/indicators/ethereum_average_transaction_... , you have to pay USD 20 just as payment fees? I wrote off Bitcoin as a payment mechanism a long time ago because of this (although it seems BTC tx costs are now lower than ETH?), is this the direction tx costs for all cr…

https://mempool.space/

As of writing, a Bitcoin transaction costs $4.76.

The last time I received a Bitcoin payment, it cost $0.36 in network fees. The network is currently more congested, so the fees are higher at the moment.

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

#798

Post by nikanj » Tue, May 18, 2021, 8:35 PM UTC

intotheabyss wrote: post #774

simias wrote: post #650

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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....

Cryptos also have a thriving theft ecosystem, and illegal uses dwarf the few defi experiments.

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

#799

Post by SmellTheGlove » Tue, May 18, 2021, 8:35 PM UTC

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.

> People are buying it now to run apps making money off of defi.

Serious question - what does this actually mean? What defi apps are people running to make money besides minting other coins?

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

#800

Post by Ma8ee » Tue, May 18, 2021, 8:35 PM UTC

DickingAround wrote: post #726

simias wrote: post #650

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 exp…

And why would you want a deflationary currency? If you see it as an investment, then of course. But for the general economy it is better when people spend their money sooner rather than later, and capital gets invested where it does something useful.