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The Ethereum merge is done

coindesk.com

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Re: The Ethereum merge is done

#791

Post by phantomwhiskers »

scoofy wrote: post #786
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…

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…

I was under the impression that when they said "This is a fraction of the amount I put back into the grid", it implied that they are generating their own electricity to use for this, most likely from solar panels.

This is an assumption though, they could be running a large diesel generator for all we know.

Re: The Ethereum merge is done

#792

Post by laweijfmvo »

pa7x1 wrote: post #572
neprotivo wrote: post #457

It looks like the new Blockchain is quite centralized. 45% of blocks are mined by just two addresses: https://twitter.com/santimentfeed/status/1570339602346684416...

First one is Lido and second one is Coinbase both of them are pools. Lido is more decentralized than Coinbase as the stake is spread across many different staking providers. In any case the situation is not ideal and a bigger uptake of solo staking and truly decentralized staking solutions like RocketPool would be beneficial. https://etherscan.io/address/0x388c818ca8b9251b393131c08a736... https://etherscan.io/address…

wait, so why does Coinbase "own" a wallet with all its users ETH in it? Who really "owns" the coins held on Coinbase?

Re: The Ethereum merge is done

#793

Post by hartator »

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…

Most people don’t even read the original bitcoin whitepaper: https://bitcoin.org/bitcoin.pdf

In between a blog post and a book. I think it’s a good starting (and ending lol) point.

Re: The Ethereum merge is done

#794

Post by sam0x17 »

apeace wrote: post #742
camjohnson26 wrote: post #715

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ethereum Classic’s hash rate has gone up by about 25% of Ethereum’s hashrate, so at least for now it looks like a lot of the energy use is just moving as miners point their GPU rigs at alt coins. Very curious to see if ETHW, ie Ethereum without the merge, maintains a significant amount of hashing power. Another thing to watch will be if those alt coins are profitable to keep mining or if miners will start selling the…

Aha, thank you! I felt like this change should be visible in some kind of graph somewhere, and you're right, the ETC hashrate has roughly quadrupled in the span of two days: https://minerstat.com/coin/ETC/network-hashrate And here is the ETHW hashrate: https://minerstat.com/coin/ETHW/network-hashrate EDIT: Better links

There will probably be some really interesting network effects with this. Since a lot of the other PoW coins that are ETH-hardware compatiable have low volume, I think we're going to very rapidly see the profitably of mining these go way down (to the point of going negative in some cases) as all these extra miners suddenly start mining these coins, but this takes time. So in other words, I would expect the real global energy usage reduction to happen weeks or months after the merge since it will take a while for all the altcoins to get overmined.

Re: The Ethereum merge is done

#795

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.

And in the case that the malicious supermajority isn't breaking the rules? In the stated instance where they're omitting certain transactions, what rule would they be breaking?

Re: The Ethereum merge is done

#796

Post by derac »

once_inc wrote: post #469
Waterluvian wrote: post #451

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not using up a goat load of electricity is like 99% of why this change is great. Let people speculate on their funny money without harming everyone. A lateral move on the other details is rather unsurprising.

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…

Can you prove out the math on that one please?

Re: The Ethereum merge is done

#797

Post by trompetenaccoun »

webinvest wrote: post #777
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…

Ethereum miners were using GPUs. AMD, Nvidia, and others. They could switch their GPUs from mining ethereum which is about $1500 per coin to Ethereum classic but that is only about $40 per coin. I’d guess that wouldn’t be worth continuing with since it would be much less than than their electricity bill. They could sell their GPUs on EBay or other secondary markets, switch to protein folding, cloud-based password cra…

In case of Ethereum that wasn't true afaik, a lot of it was mined in the US for example. Since Ethereum wasn't all ASICs like Bitcoin, there was more decentralization in that sense with individuals running miners from home, not always at the highest efficiency. Your first paragraph is correct regarding profitability for most miners though, based on the numbers I've seen.

One thing that I find interesting in the electricity debates is that if we took the gaming example and looked at the collective consumption of all people playing video games around the world, you'd arrive at even larger numbers of power usage and emissions. Yet this isn't ever discussed, even though an immutable public ledger like Bitcoin arguably has more utility for society than playing games. A lot of HN users probably play video games, CO2 emissions are of course mainly an issue caused by other people and activities oneself doesn't take part in. In Europe, there's also a trend of public anger against SUVs and there are groups slashing tires of cars, simply based on the shape and ignoring the actual energy efficiency. Happened to a friend of mine who couldn't understand why they targeted her car and left 30 year old gas guzzlers in the same street alone. I think a lot of it has to do with emotions more than rational considerations around sustainability.

Re: The Ethereum merge is done

#798

Post by cliftonk »

camjohnson26 wrote: post #715
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…

Ethereum Classic’s hash rate has gone up by about 25% of Ethereum’s hashrate, so at least for now it looks like a lot of the energy use is just moving as miners point their GPU rigs at alt coins. Very curious to see if ETHW, ie Ethereum without the merge, maintains a significant amount of hashing power. Another thing to watch will be if those alt coins are profitable to keep mining or if miners will start selling the…

ETHW and ETC will not be economical to mine unless your electricity is free

Re: The Ethereum merge is done

#799

Post by anhner »

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…

don't worry, it's not "one of the largest technological events in the industry to date", they're just talking out of their ass

Re: The Ethereum merge is done

#800

Post by tgsovlerkhgsel »

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.

> Only if the next-best thing is still marginally profitable.
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