This sounds fab, I worry all the energy saved in ethereum will just be transferred over to crunching bitcoin instead and no actual energy will be saved.
The Ethereum merge is done
291–300 of 1001 posts
Re: The Ethereum merge is done
#292I appreciate it wasting less precious energy. But this change also means that "Decentralisation" and "Power to the people" are fading away right? The wealthy actors are the ones dictating the transaction now and they also on top get paid for being rich. This does not sound like a "better financial system" for me. Also, don't forget the DAO Fork[0] where with the "ungovernable Blockhain" it was decided a transaction w…
> But this change also means that "Decentralisation" and "Power to the people" are fading away right? But it was always like this, also with proof of work. PoS and PoW are both just variations of "proof of resources", which in turn is a convenient substitution for likelihood that one's voting power is independent. If you want to give "power to the people", you need some way of estimating independent voting power, tha…
Like with ballots tied to people’s real identity in some kind of “polling station”?
Re: The Ethereum merge is done
#293> 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…
It's all bullshit.
Re: The Ethereum merge is done
#294Earlier quoted context omitted.
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and instead often rely on trust in exchanging critical secrets, such as how the banking system generally works, are outdated.
> to securely make transactions without giving away our secrets such as critical account numbers
This describes any "push" payment system where you instruct your bank, service provider, wallet, device etc. to transfer funds, rather than providing the payee with your information, as well as any pull-based system with additional verification (such as 3DS and PIN-based payment cards), and isn't unique to crypto at all.
Re: The Ethereum merge is done
#295Earlier quoted context omitted.
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…
> The goal for an advanced civilization is not reduce energy usage, but make it cheaper, cleaner and more abundant!
Why? Do you think every additional watt of energy will make us happier? The countries using the most energy per capita are gulf countries like Qatar, Kuwait, the UAE. The population there is 10-20% residents, the rest are quasi-slaves living in awful conditions (hopefully you heard about what they did for the World Cup).
> 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.
Again, is the middle-eastern civilization more advanced? Most of them are still monarchies.
We already live in an energy-abundant society. Making more energy will not solve the underlying problems of it.
Re: The Ethereum merge is done
#296Does anyone know whether we will see an immediate jump in transactions per second due to this?
We will not. The throughput of the system does not get affected right now and so does the gas fee, it does not change.
Re: The Ethereum merge is done
#297Earlier quoted context omitted.
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?
There was an article that said bitcoin blockchain uses as much energy as entire country of Argentina, which made rounds here in HN (https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-56012952). In that graph there you also get US consumption too. And China's as well. Now compare them and tell me again the oceans are boiling because of bitcoin.
Re: The Ethereum merge is done
#298Earlier quoted context omitted.
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…
Pure whataboutism.
Yours? Yes, I agree. "bitcoin is boiling oceans" is laughable at best.
Re: The Ethereum merge is done
#299> 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…
Don't feel ashamed. The entire ecosystem is unsound, and the "technicalities" are the stuff that CS201 courses dismiss as irrelevant. There's no reason for a technologist to care about it.
Re: The Ethereum merge is done
#300Earlier quoted context omitted.
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…
Just like burning down houses incentivizes fire station development.