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Cryptocurrency Blockchains Don’t Need to Be Energy Intensive

spectrum.ieee.org

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Re: Cryptocurrency Blockchains Don’t Need to Be Energy Intensive

#31

Post by pietjepuk88 »

davidhyde wrote: post #19

How about a proof of negative energy requirement? Like how much solar electricity you generate or CO2 you scrub out of the air.

I'd say the most effective way for me to scrub a lot of CO2 out of the air is to burn a lot of fossil fuels, and then scrub 80-90% of it (or however efficient scrubbers are). Seems like the wrong incentive?

I feel this is somewhat similar to the story with trees. See e.g. https://www.bloomberg.com/news/newsletters/2021-04-21/money-... and https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2021/apr/11/negotiat... .

Re: Cryptocurrency Blockchains Don’t Need to Be Energy Intensive

#32

Post by davidhyde »

nnx wrote: post #26
davidhyde wrote: post #19

How about a proof of negative energy requirement? Like how much solar electricity you generate or CO2 you scrub out of the air.

That is basically what Bitcoin is... because the cheapest energy is the one you can produce yourself from renewables.

Using resources to build a solar panel that only generates electricity to feed into a bitcoin mine that basically turns that solar energy straight back into heat is a net energy negative. The only conceivable benefit is increased economies of scale for the production of solar panels.

I am talking about generating electricity and NOT using it for mining.

Re: Cryptocurrency Blockchains Don’t Need to Be Energy Intensive

#33

Post by user-the-name »

nnx wrote: post #26
davidhyde wrote: post #19

How about a proof of negative energy requirement? Like how much solar electricity you generate or CO2 you scrub out of the air.

That is basically what Bitcoin is... because the cheapest energy is the one you can produce yourself from renewables.

If this were true, we would not be in the middle of a climate crisis right now.

Re: Cryptocurrency Blockchains Don’t Need to Be Energy Intensive

#34

Post by Yizahi »

aaronhayes wrote: post #28
simiones wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If you want to have your coin begin as proof of stake you have to have some mechanism for how the initial coins are distributed and that method is usually going to involve the creators giving themselves a lot of coins. Don't Proof of Work coin issuers do the same? Even Satoshi has a pretty large amount of Bitcoin.

There were no pre-mined bitcoin distributed. Satoshi mined his coins in the early days but crucially anyone could participate and mine at the same time.

I know that in USA legal system there is concept "spirit of the law" and afaik there were cases when a person was intentionally abiding the "word of the law" but breaking "spirit of the law" and was penalized for this.

So anyway, Satoshi solo mine and anyone else's solo mine, is not technically a premine, but in a spirit - it is. Saying that solo mine is not a premine is true, but you know, I know, everyone knows that essentially it is exactly the same as premine.

Re: Cryptocurrency Blockchains Don’t Need to Be Energy Intensive

#35

Post by prox »

visualradio wrote: post #18
Negitivefrags wrote: post #8

I'm not really convinced. Proof of Stake has a startup issue that Proof of Work doesn't have. If you want to have your coin begin as proof of stake you have to have some mechanism for how the initial coins are distributed and that method is usually going to involve the creators giving themselves a lot of coins. A lot of crypto projects have all sorts of ways of obfuscating this or claiming that the intial coins will…

Ideally a system of credit based on proof of work is based on proof of productive work embodied in artifacts which competition can increase the supply of without restraint. A proof of productive work system can be implemented by having public employees of local loan office assess the minimum labor replacement cost of crops, equipment, structures, materials, and working inventory held on sites. Then allowing loans to…

What I think you’re saying is that it’s not adding value?

For me at least that is it main flaw. Trust is the only thing that’s keeping it alive, and the need for more people to buy into it. To me that makes it sound like just another MLM system.

Cryptocoin might crash at some point because of these issues.

Re: Cryptocurrency Blockchains Don’t Need to Be Energy Intensive

#36

Post by sparsely »

visualradio wrote: post #18
Negitivefrags wrote: post #8

I'm not really convinced. Proof of Stake has a startup issue that Proof of Work doesn't have. If you want to have your coin begin as proof of stake you have to have some mechanism for how the initial coins are distributed and that method is usually going to involve the creators giving themselves a lot of coins. A lot of crypto projects have all sorts of ways of obfuscating this or claiming that the intial coins will…

Ideally a system of credit based on proof of work is based on proof of productive work embodied in artifacts which competition can increase the supply of without restraint. A proof of productive work system can be implemented by having public employees of local loan office assess the minimum labor replacement cost of crops, equipment, structures, materials, and working inventory held on sites. Then allowing loans to…

If you're doing productive work then you're already producing something of value, and can likely sell more easily and safely using the existing financial system. It would have to be some sort of productive work that is not otherwise valued due to limitations in our economic system, perhaps climate change related actions as explored in Ministry for the Future. Still seems like it would just be easier to pay people normally to do that work.

Re: Cryptocurrency Blockchains Don’t Need to Be Energy Intensive

#37

Post by janmo »

The article assumes that PoW cannot be done in an energy efficient way.

Last year I wrote an article on how to do PoW in an energy efficient way by using the digital signing capability from the NFC chip of modern passports.

The proposal was discussed here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23066477

Re: Cryptocurrency Blockchains Don’t Need to Be Energy Intensive

#38

Post by Tenoke »

jayp1418 wrote: post #25

What about nano and banano?

Banano in particular has abused the airdrop (and thus distribution) system. They had an airdrop in Feb (supposed to go out in March) for Nano holders (same team) that they leveraged into a ton of publicity and people buying their coins and then just didn't give it out - in fact the project lead is hostile about it on their discord while doing more separate airdrops.

Re: Cryptocurrency Blockchains Don’t Need to Be Energy Intensive

#40

Post by Retric »

floatboth wrote: post #39

No matter how many non-PoW shitcoins you make, the main one (BTC) is not going to change and remains the dominant one . You can't solve the problem by creating more shitcoins, only by crashing the whole field into the ground.

Bitcoin is far from #1 in terms of transactions per day which seems like the only important measurement of adoption.
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