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The Ethereum merge is done

coindesk.com

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Re: The Ethereum merge is done

#781

Post by hoosieree »

cypress66 wrote: post #594
hoosieree wrote: post #532

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm still flummoxed why people use blockchains for any kind of data or computation. Fundamentally isn't blockchain a tech stack built on a linked list with mandatory network calls in every operation? It seems purposefully inefficient. At least in theory it had a point (decentralized control). In practice, however...

Bitcoin doesn't even use linked lists (it's merkle trees). Similar with other coins.

I thought the transactions within a block are stored in a Merkle tree, but the blocks themselves are stored as a linked list. So if you wanted to find a particular transaction you'd still have to traverse all the blocks (O(length)) and then inspect each block (O(log(depth))). I have no idea what dominates in verifying a Bitcoin transaction, so maybe in practice the cost of finding a particular block is amortized because you're spending most of your time within a block.

But from the original bitcoin paper[1] I got the impression that to verify any particular transaction you need to traverse the whole list of blocks.

[1]: https://bitcoin.org/bitcoin.pdf

Re: The Ethereum merge is done

#782

Post by webinvest »

nostrademons wrote: post #775
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.

They've actually forked Ethereum to keep the original mined version, ETHPoW ($ETHW). They'll keep mining on the original PoW chain as long as it remains profitable. https://blockworks.co/proof-of-work-ethereum-fork-pow-rally-... I'd expect the value of ETHW to crash fairly rapidly, though, because there are not many buyers interested in buying into a deprecated chain without official support or ecosystem buy-in, and…

With the price of ETHW currently at $22.80 and the price of ETH at $1500, I can’t imagine mining ETHW would even cover the electric bill. It’s also not clear to me what advantages ETHW would over ETC which is about $37 ea.

Previously ETC was often used as a lower cost dev-testing server for ETH applications that might not be ready for the main-net.

Re: The Ethereum merge is done

#783

Post by mnadkvlb »

razemio wrote: post #771
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.

That is rude. I care about the environment, still I am mining. How is it good for the environment? I only mine when my house and battery does not need electricity and our solar is producing over 1kw. Everything I earn (around 100-300$ a month between February to Oktober) I invest in the next environment project. My miners need about 500w. This is a fraction of the amount I put back into the grid. If I would not do th…

You should also go burn entire forests for energy and then invest the profits to plant forests to restore what you just did.

Dont want to be snarky, but thats the summary of what you just said.

Re: The Ethereum merge is done

#784

Post by dwild »

A4ET8a8uTh0 wrote: post #770
pkulak wrote: post #759

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Well, there are options. I do not want to point to obvious candidates, because I am biased and it could easily be misconstrued, but RVN just just saw a decent influx of those ETH miners based on recent spike. Life hates vacuum. Short of outright ban, nothing will change in that space.

> RVN just just saw a decent influx of those ETH miners based on recent spike

That influx won't increase the revenue though... more miners doesn't produce more coins, it's just more secure.

Considering how thin theses margins can be for miners, some will need to stop their production.

Re: The Ethereum merge is done

#785

Post by biztos »

biztos wrote: post #776

In the interest of levity, and at the risk of downvotery, I ask: > So... it's done? And the blockchain answereth: > It's done. :-) https://youtu.be/1_TuEO6Mttw

I'm OK with being downvoted for irrelevance but in case anyone doesn't get the reference:

A great deal was made of the change to Proof Of Stake, enough that it sort of became an end to itself, and the conversations about how exactly it would be safe or even a smart thing to do -- national energy output of country X notwithstanding -- got very hand-wavy.

And yet it came to pass.

The sci-fi reference linked here is about that, precisely. A big decision is made, the affected parties think they know all the implications, and yet -- well, see the movie.

Re: The Ethereum merge is done

#786

Post by scoofy »

razemio wrote: post #771
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.

That is rude. I care about the environment, still I am mining. How is it good for the environment? I only mine when my house and battery does not need electricity and our solar is producing over 1kw. Everything I earn (around 100-300$ a month between February to Oktober) I invest in the next environment project. My miners need about 500w. This is a fraction of the amount I put back into the grid. If I would not do th…

Unless your “new heating system” is a euphemism for a gpu array, you’re being pretty dishonest here.

Mining takes energy that is likely created by fossil fuel, that would otherwise be used to some necessary purposes, and burns it.

Unless you are generating green energy yourself, you’re likely hurting the environment.

I’m not saying you need to stop, and I’m not saying mining rigs are the end of the world (lord knows at least they aren’t frivolous airline flights), I’m just saying the previous poster isn’t being rude… it’s a valid point.

Re: The Ethereum merge is done

#787

Post by tbalsam »

mnadkvlb wrote: post #783
razemio wrote: post #771

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That is rude. I care about the environment, still I am mining. How is it good for the environment? I only mine when my house and battery does not need electricity and our solar is producing over 1kw. Everything I earn (around 100-300$ a month between February to Oktober) I invest in the next environment project. My miners need about 500w. This is a fraction of the amount I put back into the grid. If I would not do th…

You should also go burn entire forests for energy and then invest the profits to plant forests to restore what you just did. Dont want to be snarky, but thats the summary of what you just said.

Please keep conversation productive on HN, thank you.

Re: The Ethereum merge is done

#788

Post by trompetenaccoun »

qznc wrote: post #683
dcolkitt wrote: post #661

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's virtually no other ASIC resistant (i.e. can use GPU) PoW coin left to mine. There's the proof-of-work ETH fork, but it only has a market cap less than 2% of than real ETH. So even though they juiced the block rewards, miner rewards are more than 90% lower, which isn't enough to pay for electricity of the previous hash rate.

ETH classic hash rate went from 50 to nearly 300 Th/s. https://2miners.com/etc-network-hashrate

Yep. But with that the difficulty is going through the roof and earnings are dropping. Ethereum had A LOT of hash power while ETC isn't really used by anyone so where are the earnings supposed to come from. It's not going to be economically viable because the electricity is a fixed cost, even if some individual miners are trying it out.

There is a new PoW fork that was started by miners that want to continue mining. Some of the work could go there assuming it doesn't tank. I personally don't see the utility though, doubt it will be able to attract many users.

Re: The Ethereum merge is done

#789

Post by xenospn »

irae wrote: post #425
silisili wrote: post #57

Earlier 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.

In otehr words: You have "faith" that cryptocurrencies are a fad, right? Some people spent dozens, maybe hundreds of hours understanding everything behind it, and those people colectivelly made Bitcoin worth what it is today. You can continue to have "faith" in this having no value. But if everyone around you start using Bitcoin, would you rather switch your faith to what the others around you believe? Or you rather…

I can promise you that 99.9% of the people trading bitcoin have zero understanding about the underlying technology.

I don't need to understand how an internal combustion engine works to know cars are not a fad. Same way I don't need to know how to reverse-engineer a distributed ledger system to know crypto is.

Re: The Ethereum merge is done

#790

Post by dang »

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.

We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32853080.
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