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The Ethereum merge is done

coindesk.com

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Re: The Ethereum merge is done

#261

Post by akx »

unnouinceput wrote: post #236
ForHackernews wrote: post #211

I think this is great news because it reduces wasted energy. The sooner cryptocurrency stops boiling the ocean, the sooner the rest of us can ignore it. I have no problem with weird nerds having their own hobbies (I have a model train set!) as long as they are not actively hurting anyone. Now do the same for bitcoin.

You do realize that the entire cryptocurrency space (all coins, regardless of their names) are using less electricity than the total of electronics that are in standby in US only. So, if you want to have an impact, better to reorient your efforts to have the industry do away with standby idea. That was a good idea 5 decades ago in 70's, when electronics were expensive and they lasted a decade. But nowadays, with plan…

Don't suppose you have any data to show to back that electricity claim?

Re: The Ethereum merge is done

#262

Post by fladrif »

dannyw wrote: post #247
fladrif wrote: post #240

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Having read your article, I still don't understand one part. The claim that the honest validators in the face of a malicious superminority can eventually leak them out, but a malicious supermajority cannot do the same to an honest superminority. I figure there would need to be some other mechanism that would tip the balance in favor of the honest validators, otherwise it seems like majority should always win.

If you run a node, you're also checking that every block follows the rules. A malicious supermajority cannot break the rules your client enforces, because your client will reject it. Think of it as everyone running ethereum has a bunch of asserts() each block or communication it receives.

What are these rules? Say for instance 51% of validators decide to include a malicious transaction inside of a block, what rules would that be breaking?

Re: The Ethereum merge is done

#263

Post by sph »

CTDOCodebases wrote: post #231
JonathanBeuys wrote: post #6

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.

Now all we need to do is shutdown the gaming industry. It’s so wasteful to be using electricity when we could all be playing chess or Yazee instead.

Indeed. If energy is so important and the root of all our problems, we should stop generating and using energy altogether.

I am more and more frustrated with the energy angle of crypto. We live on a technological world that consumes energy, everything has an energy cost. The goal for an advanced civilization is not reduce energy usage, but make it cheaper, cleaner and more abundant! Why does people complaining about "0.5% of world energy usage" think we're researching fusion energy? So we can stop consuming it?

It's such a populist and uninformed argument that drives me up the wall. We can discuss the pros and cons of PoW and PoS, but using the "it consumes as much as X country" argument is intellectually dishonest and pushes forward a particular agenda. How much energy does porn use? Video games? Advertising? Spam? Space heaters? Surely we could do without them and consume even less energy.

Do you know how we can measure the technological advancement of a civilization? By how much energy they have at their disposal ready to use. [1] Not by how much energy they have saved.

We all hate climate change, let's push for cleaner energy instead of glorifying idiotic energy reduction slogans. If governments were to put a tax on energy generation from fossil fuels, crypto miners will be the first to set up hydro and solar plants to run their GPUs. Because mining makes only sense if you can get cheap energy, otherwise it's unprofitable. But that's a more nuanced and intellectual argument than "Bitcoin warms the planet!" and doesn't fit as nicely on a top-voted comment on a forum.

1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kardashev_scale

Re: The Ethereum merge is done

#264

Post by nicbou »

syl_sau wrote: post #140
colesantiago wrote: post #62

This doesn't really change anything, I still cannot find any legitimate use cases for blockchain, Proof of Stake or not. I would happy to be proven wrong, but this is extremely rare as I can't find any legitimate actual useful use case since Bitcoin and Ethereum's existence.

As someone pointed out to me recently when I argued the same thing, crypto and blockchain does have a use case: funding organizations and people through anonymous means as to circumvent the scope of the law/avoid the eyes of state or corporate authorities. This includes funding politically persecuted groups or terrorist groups as well as buying drugs or other more or less recommendable things. After all it's mostly w…

Pseudonymous, not anonymous. It's only anonymous while you take steps to make it so, and only until you make a tiny mistake.

Re: The Ethereum merge is done

#268

Post by butterlesstoast »

kwhitefoot wrote: post #156
bambax wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn't it a little unfortunate that the acronym for Proof of Stake would be PoS? Couldn't they think of something else?

You mean people might confuse it with Point of Sale? /s

I don’t think that’s an obtuse comment. I understood the article to be talking about Point of Sale the entire time because I live off the blockchain hype.

Re: The Ethereum merge is done

#269

Post by hotcoffeebear »

timeon wrote: post #201
olalonde wrote: post #157

A good moment of humility I hope for all those HN experts who implied Ethereum's transition to Proof of Stake would never happen.

Is Ethereum Classic going to be relevant?

There will be more recent PoW fork. But probably ETC will see new miners flocking.

Re: The Ethereum merge is done

#270

Post by valzam »

presentation wrote: post #124

> “Proof-of-stake is like running an app on your MacBook,” he said. “It's like running Slack. It's like running Google Chrome or running Netflix. Obviously, your MacBook plugs into the wall and uses electricity to run. But no one thinks about the environmental impact of running Slack, right?” People do think about that. But definitely an improvement!

It's also completely untrue. Staking is unprofitable if you cannot guarantee uptime of your node. In fact Ethereum includes slashing for inactivity, so not only do you lose out on rewards if you shut of your MacBook, you run the risk of losing Ethereum. Unless of course you stake with a centralized pool, which defeats the whole purpose.
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