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Ethereum will use around 99.95% less energy post merge

blog.ethereum.org

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

#841

Post by [deleted] »

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....

[deleted]

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

#842

Post by ptr2voidStar »

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 is astonishing to me that this has to be stated explicitly like this for people to see this for what it is.

"Turkeys voting for Christmas" comes to mind.

Cryptocurrency offers the opportunity to break away from the current hegemony - only for people to hand over the power back to the powerful.

Perhaps the world is in the current state - because that's what we deserve? (because we keep voting for it?)

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

#843

Post by 908087 »

Mc_Big_G wrote: post #715
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…

You might think Bitcoin is not a good store of value, but a lot of people disagree with you. The energy "waste" argument is just virtual signaling at this point. It has been thoroughly debunked.

How, exactly, has the energy waste argument been thoroughly debunked? As far as I can tell, the waste has increased exponentially in recent months.. which isn't the kind of factoid I'd put in the "debunked" column.

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

#844

Post by ByThyGrace »

everfree wrote: post #769
fredfoobar wrote: post #661

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Compare this to PoW, where only 51% of hashrate needs to be participating/complicit to censor certain transactions, the other 49% have no way of fighting back, and the only tool the community has to fork away is to change the PoW algorithm. This is just such a small part of the whole equation. 1. They can't continuously attack with this, as you need to expend energy as long as you want to continue with the attack.…

1. Under PoW, a 51% attacker can continuously attack profitably. All the energy they expend gets returned as mining rewards just like normal, and they can potentially even (up to) double their rewards if they censor the other 49%. The only way to stop this aside from changing the PoW algorithm is to physically locate and seize the mining rigs. 2. Majority stakers can't change the rules of the system either.

> All the energy they expend gets returned as mining rewards just like normal

Is that because the mined blocks themselves are still valid (i.e. the hashes check out), regardless of the presence of an attacker? But then how does it help the attacker in an economical sense? Doesn't the rest of the network know that the new 51% blocks are tainted, so to speak?

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

#845

Post by ptr2voidStar »

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…

The level of delusion when it comes to cryptocurrencies - is unreal.

As a market practitioner of many decades, I must say I have never witness this level of froth and delusion before.

I'm studying it with great interest (and a touch of disdain about my fellow humans unbounded rationality/irrational exuberance about cryptos)

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

#846

Post by eyezick »

jude- wrote: post #822
eyezick wrote: post #727

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Why does the attacker need to hold or buy any coins? All the attacker has to do to wreck havoc is prevent quorum from being reached. This can be done by knocking validators offline (which is a slashable penalty), or hacking validators and making them slash themselves, or hacking an exchange or two in order to amass control of 33% or more of the voting power.

The point is it mitigates the on-chain attack surface which is still prevalent on PoW. Off-chain attacks are still possible for all consensus mechanism.

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

#847

Post by ptr2voidStar »

Ma8ee wrote: post #800
DickingAround wrote: post #726

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Ah, the old Keynesian argument...

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

#848

Post by lumost »

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…

The main value of cryptocurrencies is a provable ledger with an open API. PoS sufficiently establishes that for all economic purposes save for those wishing to make themselves feudal lords.

Currently your money is transmitted by csv copies across thousands of companies, most of whom use a semi-manual process. Moving this type of transaction to a distributed ledger will save financial institutions billions in audit costs.

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

#849

Post by DickingAround »

everfree wrote: post #576
DickingAround wrote: post #261

This reduces security considerably. Fundamentally, the proof of work system locks in longer chains because of all the work that was done historically . If there is just one honest node out there you will be able to tell the difference between the honest one and a majority of fakes. With proof of stake there is nothing beyond the will of the current majority to lock in what is right. If you feel the majority is always…

This property is called Weak Subjectivity and is indeed a compromise that PoS makes over PoW. However, in practice, the trust assumptions aren't much higher than when you, say, download node software from a source that you trust. > I do not feel I can trust the majority to be correct every minute or every day forever. With weak subjectivity, you only have to trust them to be correct on a timeframe of every few months…

How do you know who to trust under Weak Subjectivity? It amounts to saying "I'm pretty sure we'll be able to google it and figure it out". But that then relies on these 3rd party systems to be able to identify who to trust. How can you really know who to trust for a protocol that's supposed to be distributed and ownerless. If the US turned into Russia-level of corruption, we essentially have to trust the owners of ETH to successfully flee to somewhere that we can protect them. What if they die or go bankrupt and no one agrees on who owns ETH?

If the answer is 'we'll trust the majority of users'. How do you know who that majority users are? Is that literally people the hold a lot of the ETH gas? So I know who has ETH based on what software I download and I download software based on who has ETH? And I know I'm in the right cycle of that form because I googled it and found an 'authority'? Risky.

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

#850

Post by wpietri »

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…

> we have a deflationary currency we trade for goods and services.

You do not, not really. Merchant adoption is microscopic. Even prominent Bitcoin fans admit it's terrible as a payment system. E.g., Fred Wilson of Union Square Ventures: https://avc.com/2017/08/store-of-value-vs-payment-system/

Or look at Overstock, one of the few large retailers that accepts it. Something like 0.1% of their business is done using it, which explains why most other merchants don't bother. Even there, they price everything in dollars, so if the Bitcoin price shifts between you purchasing something and you returning it, you'll get the dollar equivalent, not the Bitcoin you gave them: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/02/03/style/what-can-you-actual...

This is especially obvious when you contrast it with something like M-Pesa, an e-cash system that launched around the same time. It's hugely popular in the countries it operates in. (Along the way, it did a lot for banking the unbanked, one of the mirage-like goals that Bitcoin is always approaching but never arrives at.) The transaction volume is orders of magnitude higher than Bitcoin. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M-Pesa

Sure, it technically works; you can probably still buy a pizza somewhere. But "technically works" is a shaky standard even for something that just launched. It's no standard at all for something that launched the same time as Android or Uber.

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