Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

The Ethereum merge is done

coindesk.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

751–760 of 1001 posts

Re: The Ethereum merge is done

#751

Post by ineedasername »

seibelj wrote: post #462
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…

Quoted post unavailable.

This has never been an issue that can be discussed in such an abbreviated form. So you're criticizing earlier simplistic dismissals of crypto because of their over simplifications. Yet now you're also trying to dismiss a more detailed bit of thinking on crypto when it tries to correct the exact faults you found in those simplistic criticism precisely because it is more detailed. You can't have it both ways.

Re: The Ethereum merge is done

#752

Post by mrb »

hwillis wrote: post #511
once_inc wrote: post #469

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Using electricity isn't the problem. Anyone could use vast amounts of electricity as long as they are willing to pay the price for it. The problem is carbon emissions. The switch to PoS is a non-issue from my perspective: a centralized system changed from using method A to method B, I don't understand why I should care. Bitcoin mining is increasingly being used to prevent methane emissions in stranded gas reserves. H…

> The switch to PoS is a non-issue from my perspective: a centralized system changed from using method A to method B, I don't understand why I should care. Because every bitcoin transaction costs $60 in electricity. That is a monumentally stupid amount to pay. It's $125 per kB. Proof of stake incentivizes capital directly. Proof of work incentivizes capital via the ability to find prime numbers, which limits you to p…

«Because every bitcoin transaction costs $60 in electricity.»

A common misconception. Only a fraction (about 1% at the moment) of Bitcoin's electricity consumption is derived from transactions, because transaction fees account for only about 1% of miners revenues. The average transaction fee is about $1 at the moment, so a transaction "costs" only $1 in electricity because it provides $1 of extra revenue to miners who can subsequently spend it on opex (electricity).

Re: The Ethereum merge is done

#753

Post by felipelalli »

kenforthewin wrote: post #745
oliwarner wrote: post #727

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

My understanding is that Ethereum PoW used traditional GPUs whereas for example Bitcoin uses ASICs - "PoW hardware" is not as interchangeable as you're implying.

But there are a lot of sh1tcoins that is similar to ETH POW and then can be exchanged to the real asset: Bitcoin.

Re: The Ethereum merge is done

#754

Post by [deleted] »

Jasper_ wrote: post #669
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…

My view is that crypto's goals (e.g. decentralized, deflationary, no transaction reversals) are non-goals, but even if those non-goals were goals, both PoW and PoS fail to effectively solve them, especially the decentralized part. PoS sucks more than PoW on this axis: PoS encourages centralization within the system (those with more ETH control the chain), and PoW encourages centralization outside the system (those wh…

[deleted]

Re: The Ethereum merge is done

#755

Post by physicsguy »

felipelalli wrote: post #753
kenforthewin wrote: post #745

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My understanding is that Ethereum PoW used traditional GPUs whereas for example Bitcoin uses ASICs - "PoW hardware" is not as interchangeable as you're implying.

But there are a lot of sh1tcoins that is similar to ETH POW and then can be exchanged to the real asset: Bitcoin.

It is only worth it though if the shitcoin is worth more than the cost of electricity used to generate it. At the moment and for many miners, that just won’t be the case.

Re: The Ethereum merge is done

#756

Post by solumos »

kuschku wrote: post #216
solumos wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

the easiest use case to grok (and one that's being used right now) is a near-instant global settlement layer e.g. startups today are able to accept funds in USDC[0] without the hassle + cost of sending/receiving a wire transfer or waiting up to 2 weeks for an ACH to clear. Another interesting use case is tracking provenance for physical goods. e.g. the ownership history of a bottle of whiskey[1] or wine[2] [0] - http…

But why? Rolling out SEPA ICT globally would have benefit far more people in far better ways. The ability to send money instantly from any regular bank account to any other regular bank account, without any fees, that's what we should aim for. Cryptocurrencies do this worse than the existing banking tech (e.g., the mentioned SEPA ICT).

> But why?

Mostly US bureaucracy and central banks + states having their own agendas. At this point, world governments have had how many years to figure this out? It's no better than 2009 in the US.

Much of the world doesn't have SEPA ICT. And much of the world probably doesn't want to support a euro-centric system (e.g. Serbia). Also, about ~1B people in the world are unbanked.

Decoupling the geopolitical aspects from the settlement layer is a big advantage to crypto. USDC/Circle is free to censor whomever they'd like, but the Ethereum blockchain isn't going to halt at the whims of the SEC or any other regulator.

Re: The Ethereum merge is done

#757

Post by dheera »

oliwarner wrote: post #727
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.

If the PoW markets collapse they'll just invent new PoW shitcoins that will go up.

Re: The Ethereum merge is done

#758

Post by status200 »

lmarcos wrote: 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…

Reading this will get you more informed than 90% of the commenters on this particular topic: https://vitalik.ca/general/2020/11/06/pos2020.html

Re: The Ethereum merge is done

#759

Post by pkulak »

oliwarner wrote: post #727
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.

Maybe. What are they gonna move to though? If everyone moves to some other coin (not Bitcoin, because that's different hardware), it'll quickly become unprofitable to mine. They'll just sell their hardware, most likely. Hopefully.

Re: The Ethereum merge is done

#760

Post by _xrp0 »

progman32 wrote: post #740
colordrops wrote: post #723

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Okay, then they leak their private key.

Good luck getting a private key out of a HSM.
Post reply on HN