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The Ethereum merge is done

coindesk.com

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Re: The Ethereum merge is done

#721

Post by guerrilla »

apeace wrote: post #634

> It's like Finland has suddenly shut off its power grid So, have we observed global energy usage go down by about one Finland? Shouldn't that be observable somehow? Shouldn't there be some power stations reducing their output as a reaction to reduced demand? Anyone know how this would be visible, and on what kind of time frame we expect it to become visible? I'm not claiming it hasn't happened. I just feel surprised…

> Shouldn't there be some power stations reducing their output as a reaction to reduced demand?

Not likely. We'rein an energy crisis and it just started getting cold. So, the opposite.

Re: The Ethereum merge is done

#722

Post by teawrecks »

ajross wrote: post #666
matkoniecz wrote: post #656

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, that is more diffuse. Whoever was using this electronics switched to other BTC variants, but in long term this reduced profitability and should harm people using energy in this way. But sadly no immediate impact, unless there are electronics that could be profitably consuming power for Ethereum and it is not profitable for alternatives.

In some sense that's true, but missing the point. The amount of energy worth buying to mine crypto is exactly equal to the value of the crypto mined. What we should expect to see[1] is that the value of "Proof-of-Work ETH" (which is still a functioning blockchain[2], just like Ethereum Classic is) will drop as attention is focused on PoS ETH. And so energy devoted to it will drop in tandem. It's also true that there…

> The amount of energy worth buying to mine crypto is exactly equal to the value of the crypto mined.

That's like saying a stock price is directly proportional to the p/e ratio. Things have both intrinsic and extrinsic value. You are only considering the intrinsic value. In reality, people mine stuff at a loss all the time because they think it might be work more later, i.e. speculation.

Re: The Ethereum merge is done

#723

Post by colordrops »

bcrosby95 wrote: post #684
ineedasername wrote: post #444

Prior to the merge ethereum’s trust was controlled by the organizations with the most money who bought/built massive data centers to mine it. With the merge & staking that abstraction layer has disappeared and it’s still the organizations with the most money who control it. Sure it’s great that non-productive math problems no longer need to be solved & consume so much energy and hardware to make it all work. And it m…

> If a criminal spies on my credit card # as I make a purchase and uses that to go on a spending spree I can fix it with the credit card company with little cost but a few hours of time and frustration. I'll take this one step further. My credit card company has caught every instance of fraud on my card. So I've had zero hours of frustration yet multiple instances of people trying to use my credit card number. One ti…

There can't be fraud of the sort that you get with credit cards on a blockchain unless you leak your private keys.

The fact that security is built around a 16 digit number and 3 digit pin that you share with everyone and can be reused is embarrassing for credit card companies, not a win. Amazing.

Re: The Ethereum merge is done

#724

Post by ineedasername »

CodeShmode wrote: post #468
ineedasername wrote: post #444

Prior to the merge ethereum’s trust was controlled by the organizations with the most money who bought/built massive data centers to mine it. With the merge & staking that abstraction layer has disappeared and it’s still the organizations with the most money who control it. Sure it’s great that non-productive math problems no longer need to be solved & consume so much energy and hardware to make it all work. And it m…

> Their influence still can override the mining process that’s supposed to be the final word on transactions. Any attempted tampering would be highly visible and why would anyone with control of that much ETH risk loss of trust in their valuable asset?

I'm not talking about tampering, not in the sense of a 51% double spend or anything. I'm talking about off-chain real world human influence. I'm talking about things like The DAO, an organization that was such a huge player in ethereum at the time that when they suffered an exploit like so many others have over the years ethereum did a hard fork for just them to fix things.

How many smaller players in the crypto scene have received that kind white glove treatment, going against the "code is law" principle, when they've lost huge sums of money? Code was law right up until The DAO massively screwed up and was deemed Too Big to Fail. No different than traditional financial institutions.

As the mining resources of the various trustless Proof of $X models needed to makes crypto work are increasingly centralized into the hands of massive players in the field the principle of crypto democratizing control of money & finance is becoming an Emperor With [increasingly] No Clothes.

Re: The Ethereum merge is done

#725

Post by colordrops »

ineedasername wrote: post #444

Prior to the merge ethereum’s trust was controlled by the organizations with the most money who bought/built massive data centers to mine it. With the merge & staking that abstraction layer has disappeared and it’s still the organizations with the most money who control it. Sure it’s great that non-productive math problems no longer need to be solved & consume so much energy and hardware to make it all work. And it m…

You are saying two contradictory things. First that those with the most money control Ethereum, and then that transactions can't be controls be reversed, indicating that you want a human layer of control that is currently missing. This is a conflating of layers and evidence of a fundamental misunderstanding of of how it works.

The fact that these types of get off my lawn comments get voted to the top of HN that make me wonder if I'm on a ship of fools that is no longer the center of gravity of interesting and creative tech thought.

Crypto has been around for over a decade and isn't going away, and it's an complex technology that has massive depth and a lot of interest. These sorts of negative superficial comments that get repeated ad infinitum are tiring and provide no value.

If you prefer credit cards then use them. No one is taking that away from you. That isn't the main use case that Ethereum is going after.

Re: The Ethereum merge is done

#726

Post by postalrat »

yoden wrote: post #637
djhworld wrote: post #475

Does this mean GPU prices will go down? At least according to this article the validator nodes can be run on a Raspberry Pi [1] [1] https://ethereum.org/en/energy-consumption/

GPU prices are already down. "Sell the rumor, buy the news" and all that.

GPU prices have only started to go down.

Re: The Ethereum merge is done

#727

Post by oliwarner »

apeace wrote: post #634

> It's like Finland has suddenly shut off its power grid So, have we observed global energy usage go down by about one Finland? Shouldn't that be observable somehow? Shouldn't there be some power stations reducing their output as a reaction to reduced demand? Anyone know how this would be visible, and on what kind of time frame we expect it to become visible? I'm not claiming it hasn't happened. I just feel surprised…

The people who were mining ETH didn't give a toss about the environment. They invested in PoW hardware and they're not going to stop using it because ETH is now PoS, they'll just mine something else.

I just hope the PoW markets collapse now ETH is moving on.

Re: The Ethereum merge is done

#728

Post by Edman274 »

teawrecks wrote: post #722
ajross wrote: post #666

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In some sense that's true, but missing the point. The amount of energy worth buying to mine crypto is exactly equal to the value of the crypto mined. What we should expect to see[1] is that the value of "Proof-of-Work ETH" (which is still a functioning blockchain[2], just like Ethereum Classic is) will drop as attention is focused on PoS ETH. And so energy devoted to it will drop in tandem. It's also true that there…

> The amount of energy worth buying to mine crypto is exactly equal to the value of the crypto mined. That's like saying a stock price is directly proportional to the p/e ratio. Things have both intrinsic and extrinsic value. You are only considering the intrinsic value. In reality, people mine stuff at a loss all the time because they think it might be work more later, i.e. speculation.

Why would they mine it at a loss relative to the market when they could just buy it at whatever the current market price is, if they think it's going to go up in the future?

Re: The Ethereum merge is done

#729

Post by galaxyLogic »

ineedasername wrote: post #444

Prior to the merge ethereum’s trust was controlled by the organizations with the most money who bought/built massive data centers to mine it. With the merge & staking that abstraction layer has disappeared and it’s still the organizations with the most money who control it. Sure it’s great that non-productive math problems no longer need to be solved & consume so much energy and hardware to make it all work. And it m…

> liberation of people from massively powerful banks and governments

The difference between business and governments is that in business every dollar has a vote, whereas in a democracy every adult has a vote.

"liberation of people" can only happen by having a working democracy. And a working democracy can only exist when there is (democratically elected) government. So it's not like people should be liberated from government, people should be the government.

Therefore I think the best situation is where government controls the money, and we the people control the government.

Re: The Ethereum merge is done

#730

Post by [deleted] »

pharmakom wrote: post #367

Intuitively to me it seems that PoS can never work. With PoW the physical reality of scarce energy secures the chain - you can’t spend energy on one computation and another. With PoS we secure it by holding Ether, but what determines who holds Ether? The chain! But that’s what we are trying to secure. Is this turtles all the way down? Can anyone enlighten me?

[deleted]
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