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Ethereum 2.0 – Minimum deposit reached

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Re: Ethereum 2.0 – Minimum deposit reached

#171

Post by minitoar »

no_wizard wrote: post #167
dmos62 wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> Proof-of-work incentivizes cheap & renewable energy investment. > Cheap yes, renewable no. Complete non sequitur there. That's the main point. There's no inherent incentive to use clean energy for mining. There's opposite stories about obsolete aluminum plants staying alive in China by just using their energy allocations to mine Bitcoin.

I have to call this out as google didn’t back this claim up readily. Do you have a source? I Cabot believe an aluminum plant could make Enough money off of Bitcoin mining to subsidize its operations like that at first blush. I’m very interested in reading about it though

I would imagine they stop making any significant amount of Aluminum at that point.

Re: Ethereum 2.0 – Minimum deposit reached

#172

Post by Applejinx »

shermanmccoy wrote: post #127
wildsatchmo wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Funny nobody complains about the energy consumed by actual banks and other services Bitcoin would replace, which is much higher. In those circumstances they can understand it's not a waste at all, but a cost of providing a valuable service. I don't think POS is an adequate replacement. POW was an intentional design choice because of the highly competitive environment that it creates.

Do you have some modelling, or any credible reference to back up your assertion that the energy used by banks would be higher than a Bitcoin blockchain?

And if so, would you provide a projection for the relative energy useage of traditional banking vs. bitcoin for a linearly expanding money supply extended out indefinitely?

Re: Ethereum 2.0 – Minimum deposit reached

#173

Post by SiempreViernes »

intotheabyss wrote: post #155
kybernetikos wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> the energy required to produce a new gram of gold Gold is valuable because people buy it. People don't buy it because of some hypothetical amount of energy that went into producing it, they buy it mostly because it's shiny and rare (and sometimes because it doesn't corrode much or conducts well). The energy cost to produce is relevant to its price only in so far as it feeds into the supply / demand equation.

If it took little to no effort to get gold, then it wouldn't be valuable. The only reason something like gold is valuable is because it's scarce, and it's scarce because it requires a lot of work to extract. Am I missing something here?

Gold is scarce because there's just not a lot of it in the bits of the earth we can reach.

Uranium fuel takes a lot of effort to refine, but it's still cheaper than gold; partially because it's simply more common in the crust.

Re: Ethereum 2.0 – Minimum deposit reached

#174

Post by woahAcademia »

drcode wrote: post #156
woahAcademia wrote: post #108

I stopped trusting ethereum after EIP669. Ethereum used to have a soft cap of 100M coins. They removed the cap. Ethereum is no Bitcoin. It's more akin to dogecoin/fiat with its infinite money. Hope POS works so Bitcoin can adopt it.

I've been involved with ethereum long before the presale and never once has there been any expectation of a soft cap. Nobody removed a cap. If you don't like an uncapped coin, use Bitcoin and help them figure out how their coin is going to maintain security after the mining rewards start to dwindle.

EIP 669. Google it

Re: Ethereum 2.0 – Minimum deposit reached

#175

Post by zilebune »

koheripbal wrote: post #145
zilebune wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think with Eth2 we're possibly seeing a the first attempt to address the Innovator's Dilemma[0] in the blockchain environment. I've been following the Eth2 progress for a few months now and from the outside it really feels like trying to swap out the engine of a running racecar. Definitely worth to follow how the Eth1->Eth2 evolution will play out, but I wonder if is not too late for Ethereum while newer kids on th…

I find it difficult to find a source of highly technical news on new cryptos. Any suggestions?

Sorry, I haven't found a serious technical source of blockchain/crypto news either and I suspect this is because there are (still) few people that understand cryptos in depth, as well as have time to write news about it.

The vast majority of projects out there are pure speculations and a decent scan through their blog posts, whitepapers and activity on their public repos should be enough to decide if they're building something meaningful (and worth to follow long term) or not.

Re: Ethereum 2.0 – Minimum deposit reached

#176

Post by SiempreViernes »

pclmulqdq wrote: post #152
krageon wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The whole "this costs too much power!" movement is disingenuous, it generally relies upon comparisons to Visa or similar networks. These networks are built upon the suffering of millions (which you can I suppose equate to rampant CO2 production, if you really wanted to) and should not be used at all. Any alternative is better than that. Then of course there is the whole notion that using a lot of power is in and of i…

Serious question: Who suffers at the hands of Mastercard?

Bitcoin exchanges?

Re: Ethereum 2.0 – Minimum deposit reached

#177

Post by kybernetikos »

intotheabyss wrote: post #155
kybernetikos wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> the energy required to produce a new gram of gold Gold is valuable because people buy it. People don't buy it because of some hypothetical amount of energy that went into producing it, they buy it mostly because it's shiny and rare (and sometimes because it doesn't corrode much or conducts well). The energy cost to produce is relevant to its price only in so far as it feeds into the supply / demand equation.

If it took little to no effort to get gold, then it wouldn't be valuable. The only reason something like gold is valuable is because it's scarce, and it's scarce because it requires a lot of work to extract. Am I missing something here?

> The only reason something like gold is valuable is because it's scarce, and it's scarce because it requires a lot of work to extract.

These things are true but not necessarily so. Things can be scarce without being difficult to refine from raw materials (a stamp). Things can be difficult to extract without being particularly scarce (aluminium). Things can be valuable without being scarce (TVs), things can be scarce and not valuable (an original artwork by my 4 year old daughter).

The only thing that makes something valuable is that it is valued by people. People are weird and have lots of different reasons for valuing things. There are lots of things I could burn an insane amount of energy and money on that would not result in anything valued by others.

The idea that something should be valued based on the work that went into creating it is interesting as a hypothetical idea but not something that is very relevant to the actual world we live in.

If anything, you've got it backwards:

> it's scarce because it requires a lot of work to extract

It requires a lot of work to extract because it was so valuable that all the easy-to-extract gold was taken and put in jewelry and vaults.

Re: Ethereum 2.0 – Minimum deposit reached

#178

Post by kybernetikos »

shawnz wrote: post #149
roenxi wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is genuine value in that, a similar operation has been performed using silver & gold for thousands of years. Gold is an almost exactly the same in that respect - energy gets burned on the owners behalf, and they can prove it happened. The difference that I'm keeping an interested eye on is even if gold mining ceases, the energy required to produce a new gram of gold doesn't really change so a gram of gold still…

Why would gold mining cease if availability of gold hasn't changed? It would mean everyone is willingly choosing to leave money on the table. If Bitcoin mining becomes unprofitable, Bitcoin users could incentivize it through increased transaction fees.

One of the wrinkles is that bitcoin mining is an adaptive system. If mining becomes entirely unprofitable, then miners will drop out, and mining will become easier. This process will continue until equilibrium is achieved where participating miners are making only a very small amount of money based on their energy costs.

Of course, what you say about transaction fees is true too - if miners are receiving less in 'mined' bitcoins, then they are likely to demand more in fees. You can already see this happening - when I first used bitcoin, nobody charged any fees at all, relying only on the mining rewards for covering their mining costs.

Re: Ethereum 2.0 – Minimum deposit reached

#179

Post by kybernetikos »

krageon wrote: post #104
beaner wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just to riff on this idea, despite inevitable pushback: Bitcoin's proof-of-work is basically a conversion of energy directly into money. This pushes competition towards cheaper and cheaper sources of energy. First it's finding jurisdictions that subsidize it, then it's creating your own cheaper energy sources. Proof-of-work incentivizes cheap & renewable energy investment. The penultimate phase is custom off-grid min…

The whole "this costs too much power!" movement is disingenuous, it generally relies upon comparisons to Visa or similar networks. These networks are built upon the suffering of millions (which you can I suppose equate to rampant CO2 production, if you really wanted to) and should not be used at all. Any alternative is better than that. Then of course there is the whole notion that using a lot of power is in and of i…

As you rightly point out, whether something is considered to cost too much power properly depends on what you compare it with.

Before there was a viable alternative to POW for achieving the goals of a decentralised currency, it was at least debateable about whether the benefits of the decentralised currency were worth the cost of POW compared to the alternatives, but now that it appears POS is a viable alternative, there can be no question - POW costs too much power.

Re: Ethereum 2.0 – Minimum deposit reached

#180

Post by blurbleblurble »

newyankee wrote: post #3
drcode wrote: post #2

TLDR; The transition from Eth1->Eth2 requires the following steps: 1. Network operators (stakers) deposit at least 524,288 ETH in a special contract 2. The early Eth2 blockchain (the "beacon chain") launches Dec 1st 3. The Eth1 blockchain will be merged into Eth2 (details TBD) 4. Other features will be added to make Eth2 fully functional (sharding being the biggest feature) Just a few minutes ago, step 1 has been acc…

Does this mean no more mining and waste of electricity ?

Not to mention GPUs! Can you believe how many GPUs have been cooked by this scheme? I got a water-cooled GTX 1080 almost 5 years ago on Craigslist for $500. Usually old things like that get cheaper as time goes by, but not GPUs. Nowadays those things are going for like $800. I was hoping to upgrade to an RTX2080 or something (also a few years old now) but they're like $1000!

I can't help but think that cryptocurrency mining is mostly responsible. And supposedly long term mining just fries GPUs, so the used market is dubious anyway.

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