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Ethereum Plans to Cut Its Energy Consumption by 99 Percent

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Re: Ethereum Plans to Cut Its Energy Consumption by 99 Percent

#181

Post by Nursie »

jerguismi wrote: post #171
wpietri wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But if decentralization doesn't matter, then what's the point of these technologies? One can build these things much, much more efficiently if centralization is fine. Financial exchanges have been doing that for years. E.g., if you look at the LMAX approach, they can hit TPS rates something like 1,000,000 times faster than common blockchains: https://martinfowler.com/articles/lmax.html

> But if decentralization doesn't matter, then what's the point of these technologies? I don't think "decentralization" is a good term to define cryptocurrencies like bitcoin or ethereum. There are lot of properties in these systems. For example limited supply, untamperability of history, irreversable transactions, permissionless use etc. You can compare to older systems offering similar features and how well these s…

Most people, most use cases, don't want irreversibility.

Reversible transactions are a huge positive.

Re: Ethereum Plans to Cut Its Energy Consumption by 99 Percent

#182

Post by xorcist »

mabbo wrote: post #18

I want to write a snarky or skeptical comment about how it's probably going to fail, but honestly I kind of love the way Proof of Stake works. Instead of mining, those who want in put down a stake of ether that they can mine it and get a better chance of winning based on the size of the stake. If they get caught cheating, they lose their stake. There probably going to be some fun when the first serious exploits happe…

> If they get caught cheating, they lose their stake

in that chain. In any distributed blockchain there's going to be several chain(tips) at any given time.

Re: Ethereum Plans to Cut Its Energy Consumption by 99 Percent

#183

Post by iSnow »

amasad wrote: post #61
nostrademons wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because otherwise they end up mining the chain that nobody's using. You can own a lot of ETC and it doesn't do you much good if you can't sell them because nobody's interested in using or trading them.

However in Bitcoin the opposite happened -- the classic chain is the most valuable one despite being the least "scalable" or whatever pet feature the forks has. Also despite all the bitcoin celebrities being for the fork. That's behaving more like a decentralized technology that no single entity controls.

A lot of BTC celebs didn't follow BCH at all. And essentially, L2 scaling as well as SegWit was shoved down our throats by the BTC Core devs. I don't see how that was very decentralized.

OTOH, I am not strongly against it, as decentralization doesn't mean every single aspect has to be free of centralized decision making (starting with the name, logo or the code). In the end, users decide if they want to use it or not.

Re: Ethereum Plans to Cut Its Energy Consumption by 99 Percent

#184

Post by iSnow »

SlowRobotAhead wrote: post #123
make3 wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

the idea that forks are easy enough for the power to be distributed seems ludacris. you need to fork a large ratio of the users in order for a fork to do anything at all, otherwise the new coin has no value. This a gives massive inertia advantage to the original project

Thanks, I feel like I’m the crazy one when people talk about “just fork it” in response to the fact that developers of any specific coin could crash it at any point. That’s not how it works in reality. Bitcoin could be entirely ruined by a couple dozen people around the world in different ways at any time. Eth and other coins even more so. The idea of who “gets trusted” in these coins is just nuts. I’m not anti-coin.…

I think your misunderstanding is believing users are locked into a crypto system if its implementation is controlled by a small group. They are not - if the developers abuse their power, users are free to migrate elsewhere and take their funds with them (in fiat value or as a different coin).

That's different to e.g. PayPal where your funds can be locked and there's nothing you can do.

Decentralized control over name, logo, features or code of a crypto coin is extremely hard to impossible, if only because there aren't too many people alive that can discuss core crypto features with any meaningful knowledge (I know I can't). Some coins do have governance features, but none of those have profited very much from that.

Re: Ethereum Plans to Cut Its Energy Consumption by 99 Percent

#185

Post by einr »

koliber wrote: post #175

Coin miners use lots of electricity and release a lot of heat. Electrical heaters use lots of electricity and release a lot of heat. Would it be viable to start a company that sends attractive-looking coin miners to people who heat with electricity? Have the coin miner subsidize 25% of the electricity consumption as the icing on the cake. Would the numbers work on that? Heating is mostly used in the winter. However,…

Would it be possible to efficiently transfer the heat into the air without using fans? Because having a bunch of GPU fans on full blast in your living room is not an option. Electrical heaters are silent and need to be.

Re: Ethereum Plans to Cut Its Energy Consumption by 99 Percent

#186

Post by vnorilo »

opnitro wrote: post #78
zanny wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> How can Ethereum be decentralized if they can so easily keep changing it? The development of crypto has really demonstrated an institutional inertia to moving away from the blessed official implementation. Tons of BTC forks were tried and failed, and almost all coins die when development stops than see their clients forked. A lot of it, I imagine, has to do with... trust . That magical thing crypto users keep tryin…

https://www.jofreeman.com/joreen/tyranny.htm This paper is ever important when trying to come up with technical solutions to societal organization.

I am shocked at how true that rings even though my circumstances are so different from hers. Thank you for linking!

Re: Ethereum Plans to Cut Its Energy Consumption by 99 Percent

#187

Post by iSnow »

exo762 wrote: post #149
hanniabu wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The miners can choose to fork fork away from those changes. The core team is merely starting the change and the miners are supporting and carrying out those changes by continuing to mine the chain with those updates.

Wrong. Economic majority decides which fork will live and which fork will die. Miners have no say. If they are unhappy, they may attempt to attack fork abiding to new rules. Whey have three venues of attack. 1. Producing blocks that abide to old rules will do nothing - client software will just reject them as incorrect. Fork choice rule (e.g. longest chain or most work done) applies when choosing between two valid bl…

There's additionally 4. Targeting transaction throughput via spam/dust attacks where malicious miners introduce empty blocks or transactions with very small sums to clog up the network/drive up tx fees. To my knowledge, this has been tried against BTC, ETH, NEO, and BCH, where at least the dust attacks against BTC were done to try to force a big-block agenda.

Re: Ethereum Plans to Cut Its Energy Consumption by 99 Percent

#188

Post by mikkelam »

koliber wrote: post #175

Coin miners use lots of electricity and release a lot of heat. Electrical heaters use lots of electricity and release a lot of heat. Would it be viable to start a company that sends attractive-looking coin miners to people who heat with electricity? Have the coin miner subsidize 25% of the electricity consumption as the icing on the cake. Would the numbers work on that? Heating is mostly used in the winter. However,…

I believe this has already been done in Siberia

Re: Ethereum Plans to Cut Its Energy Consumption by 99 Percent

#189

Post by [deleted] »

amasad wrote: post #41

> To make their intentions clear, Ethereum’s core developers reprogrammed their PoW code to create an exponential rise in mining difficulty. Known as the “Difficulty Bomb,” it began slowing the creation of new transaction blocks in late 2016 and was expected to bring ether mining to a grinding halt a few years thereafter. > This time bomb has, however, functioned more like an alarm clock with a snooze button. In Octo…

[deleted]

Re: Ethereum Plans to Cut Its Energy Consumption by 99 Percent

#190

Post by StavrosK »

opnitro wrote: post #78
zanny wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> How can Ethereum be decentralized if they can so easily keep changing it? The development of crypto has really demonstrated an institutional inertia to moving away from the blessed official implementation. Tons of BTC forks were tried and failed, and almost all coins die when development stops than see their clients forked. A lot of it, I imagine, has to do with... trust . That magical thing crypto users keep tryin…

https://www.jofreeman.com/joreen/tyranny.htm This paper is ever important when trying to come up with technical solutions to societal organization.

Oh this is the article about feminist organizations? Yes, that was a fantastic read, and I always use it when I want to argue against flat organizations, it's very compelling.
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