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The Ethereum merge is done

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Re: The Ethereum merge is done

#71
post #28

> The Merge is one of the largest technological events in the industry to date. I feel kinda ashamed. I work in the IT industry and I claim to have knowledge about ("good") software engineering practices, distributed systems, compilers, algorithms, etc. Nevertheless, I didn't understand a word of what the article is saying. Could you recommend serious references (preferably books and not random blogs) I could read to…

I'm in the same boat. However, I'm holding strong in being ignorant, as I believe crypto is a fad with no inherent value. I'm an avid reader and learner, but only if the topic is interesting or makes sense. Cryptocoins meet neither of those criteria -to me-. That can be difficult if you read tech news like us, but it will give me a small twinge of joy if I live longer than crypto. Guess we'll see.

The first problem that cryptocurrency solves is, how can to securely make transactions without giving away our secrets such as critical account numbers. It accomplishes this using cryptographic signatures.

Other systems that do not use cryptography and instead often rely on trust in exchanging critical secrets, such as how the banking system generally works, are outdated.

Re: The Ethereum merge is done

#73
post #26
post #5

I gotta say, I’ve been really cynical about this and honestly thought Ethereum would keep putting off the move to PoS forever. I’m very very happy to be wrong. I still don’t see the value in cryptocurrency as a project, but now that it’s not rolling back years of renewable energy development, I’m down to have some much more interesting conversations about Ethereum, and I may even be willing to buy some and try it out…

PoW incentivizes renewable energy development. It's certainly not rolling it back. It used to also incentivize GPU production, but as of today that has been diminished as well. Instead it is only current asset holders who reap the rewards. EDIT: Edited to include at least one source on the connections between PoW and renewable energy. This just scratches the surface though. https://squareup.com/us/en/press/bcei-white…

PoW incentivizes renewable energy development for useless mining, but not for anything more than that I guess. At least the renewables can now be used to power other more necessary demands, if the owners don’t move on to mine other coins that are compatible with their rigs.

Re: The Ethereum merge is done

#74

I assume it has been debated again and again, but since I don't know the answer I'm going to ask: We often complain people hold cryptocurrencies instead of using them as money. Isn't this change going to make this worse ?

Stablecoins are mostly what people use for payments. ETH is what's staked on the beacon chain.

Re: The Ethereum merge is done

#75
post #26
post #5

I gotta say, I’ve been really cynical about this and honestly thought Ethereum would keep putting off the move to PoS forever. I’m very very happy to be wrong. I still don’t see the value in cryptocurrency as a project, but now that it’s not rolling back years of renewable energy development, I’m down to have some much more interesting conversations about Ethereum, and I may even be willing to buy some and try it out…

PoW incentivizes renewable energy development. It's certainly not rolling it back. It used to also incentivize GPU production, but as of today that has been diminished as well. Instead it is only current asset holders who reap the rewards. EDIT: Edited to include at least one source on the connections between PoW and renewable energy. This just scratches the surface though. https://squareup.com/us/en/press/bcei-white…

Sure, that's why we had crappy GPU before crypto currencies.

Gamers had to put off buying new GPU because they were misused for POW. Ask them about the "incentivized GPU production".

Re: The Ethereum merge is done

#76
post #26
post #5

I gotta say, I’ve been really cynical about this and honestly thought Ethereum would keep putting off the move to PoS forever. I’m very very happy to be wrong. I still don’t see the value in cryptocurrency as a project, but now that it’s not rolling back years of renewable energy development, I’m down to have some much more interesting conversations about Ethereum, and I may even be willing to buy some and try it out…

PoW incentivizes renewable energy development. It's certainly not rolling it back. It used to also incentivize GPU production, but as of today that has been diminished as well. Instead it is only current asset holders who reap the rewards. EDIT: Edited to include at least one source on the connections between PoW and renewable energy. This just scratches the surface though. https://squareup.com/us/en/press/bcei-white…

> PoW incentivizes renewable energy development.

PoW incentivizes energy development. And then proceeds to use it all up on PoW. It's a paperclip optimizer, except the fitness function is how much power it can waste.

> It used to also incentivize GPU production

And then proceeds to use it all up on PoW. It's a paperclip optimizer, except the fitness function is how much e-waste it can produce.

It's for these reasons I'm not super convinced in the proof-of-storage type proposals. All it'd do is change what was being wasted. proof-of-stake seems to be the one proposal that avoids ridiculous amounts of waste. The only downside of course being that it essentially hard-codes the "1% of people make 99% of the money" principle.

Re: The Ethereum merge is done

#77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wouldnt worry, the whole system up to this point has used "technobabble" as a means to confuse and impress outsiders. When reading up on it, there is no meaning to find besides "yep, its a linked list allright".

The mark of ignorance is to dismiss things you “think” are beneath you before any real consideration. In my opinion too, the crypto crowd is typically one I like to avoid. But to dismiss the tech behind it as babble is sad.

It’s 12 year old tech that gets propped up as innovative every 2 months. I can understand his sentiment.

Re: The Ethereum merge is done

#78
post #5

I gotta say, I’ve been really cynical about this and honestly thought Ethereum would keep putting off the move to PoS forever. I’m very very happy to be wrong. I still don’t see the value in cryptocurrency as a project, but now that it’s not rolling back years of renewable energy development, I’m down to have some much more interesting conversations about Ethereum, and I may even be willing to buy some and try it out…

No post body was provided.

Re: The Ethereum merge is done

#79

It worked. And it reduces the world's energy bill by 0.5%: https://twitter.com/JonathanBeuys/status/1570305323629527046 I feel a great disturbance in the force. As if a million miners cried out all at once and then were suddenly silenced.

>And it reduces the world's energy bill by 0.5% I live in Europe and the measures my county is taking to combat energy shortage are pretty wild like limiting the heating of apartments, indoor swimming pools, reducing street lighting, but nowhere was is stated "banning crypto mining". Pretty insane how we're just tolerating this massive energy waste just so some people and organizations can have something to speculate…

Places with issues at that level aren't really where much mining is happening.
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