Coin Carbon Cap – PoW cryptocurrencies ranked by energy efficiency • Hacker News Board

Re: Coin Carbon Cap – PoW cryptocurrencies ranked by energy efficiency

#181

Post by atweiden » Mon, May 17, 2021, 2:05 AM UTC

mondoveneziano wrote: post #147

neither_color wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>If you are using 100% green energy, that energy can be used for something productive not providing PoW You can say the same thing about ANY activity that isn't an arbitrarily defined form of altruism. Sports? Concerts? Video games? All vast wastes of time, money, and energy that could be spent fighting poverty or feeding the poor. This betrays the intention of criticizing bitcoin's energy usage because it moves the…

But almost any other activity only benefits from getting more efficient. Compare today's efficient LED lighting technology with what was available a few decades ago. With proof-of-work on the other hand, efficiency is actively counteracted . If a proof-of-work cryptocurrency holds its price, its energy usage can only go up. You are also assuming that only renewable energy will be used for mining in the first place. I…

Total energy costs from PoW mining won’t rise to exceed PoW mining revenues unless miners are willing to mine at a loss. In an efficient market, one where PoW mining profits have been driven down to zero, total energy use should remain constant if market price is held constant. PoW mining energy efficiency may increase, though.

The rest of your post could be read as a criticism against incomplete application of hypothetical carbon taxation regimes. It seems weird to single out PoW cryptocurrency as the one and only benefactor to a patchwork carbon taxation regime globally.

Re: Coin Carbon Cap – PoW cryptocurrencies ranked by energy efficiency

#182

Post by Taek » Mon, May 17, 2021, 2:05 AM UTC

wpietri wrote: post #145

toomim wrote: post #36

As a Bitcoin miner ( https://toom.im ), while I appreciate the work put into it, this particular metric of "transactions per kW" might not work the way you expect. The main point that you should understand is that a PoW blockchain's energy usage is not proportional to its transactions. I'll say that a different way: the transactions themselves do not use any energy in mining. I'll say this in a third way: it takes ex…

> A better metric would be "energy use per double-spend that was prevented." Not for a general audience. The purpose of a currency is to enable transactions. Internally, I get why people involved might fuss about the metric. But from the societal perspective it's reasonable to ask, "What does it cost per unit of value created?"

Not all transactions are created equal. Some transactions are more valuable than others, and there is also value in just maintaining a steady state (holding wealth).

Something that also seems to get lost in the mix frequently is the fact that bitcoin owners themselves are the ones paying for the electricity. The security benefit comes at a cost - manifested as inflation (not just transaction fees) - and that cost is borne by all of the owners of Bitcoin. To that extent, the participants in Bitcoin are actually incentivized to use more efficient systems, because it means the inflation cost of being a participant is lower.

That they don't use cheaper systems indicates (though there are plenty of confounding factors) that they see value in paying the larger cost of holding Bitcoin.

Re: Coin Carbon Cap – PoW cryptocurrencies ranked by energy efficiency

#183

Post by 22c » Mon, May 17, 2021, 2:05 AM UTC

atweiden wrote: post #160

shawnz wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is often claimed to be an advantage of PoS: you can't get an extra increase in rate of profits by being richer (beyond the linear increase you'd expect). With PoW on the other hand, the richest have the best access to the most innovative technology and so you get superlinear profits the richer you are.

> This is often claimed to be an advantage of PoS: you can't get an extra increase in rate of profits by being richer (beyond the linear increase you'd expect). With PoW on the other hand, the richest have the best access to the most innovative technology and so you get superlinear profits the richer you are. And yet, anyone who buys these proof-of-stake coins now, years after they were launched, suffers from having…

> But in relative terms, the earliest investors are mopping the floor with the later investors, because the earliest investors can stake orders of magnitude more coins.

PoS networks are typically not going to be minting coins in perpetuity. Most PoS networks aim to reach a "zero issuance" state where the network can sustain itself on TX fees alone. It's also typically in a networks interest to decentralise TX verification as much as possible (in contrast to banking, which tends lean towards the opposite).

Ideally a PoS network will reach a steady-state where TX verification is profitable enough that people will be willing do it for TX fees alone, but efficient enough that you can be market competitive regardless of how you choose to run your validator nodes (ie. costs should not be prohibitively high as to prevent geographical distribution).

There will always be rich and poor people - PoS networks don't aim to solve that - but the question will be is a rich person able to participate in the network more efficiently than a poor person.

Re: Coin Carbon Cap – PoW cryptocurrencies ranked by energy efficiency

#184

Post by baby » Mon, May 17, 2021, 2:07 AM UTC

bogota wrote: post #47

Interesting but I’m not sure of the point. PoW by design is not energy efficient. The incentive is just not in the correct place. Interesting but if the goal is to show more energy efficient coins we need to be looking at different tech such as PoS. Although this might have just been a fun project someone put together in which case nice job.

Exactly, hn is stuck on fossil fuel cryptocurrencies and doesn’t seem to understand that all new tech in the last 5 years hasn’t used proof of work.

Re: Coin Carbon Cap – PoW cryptocurrencies ranked by energy efficiency

#185

Post by Taek » Mon, May 17, 2021, 2:08 AM UTC

skybrian wrote: post #171

wpietri wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> A better metric would be "energy use per double-spend that was prevented." Not for a general audience. The purpose of a currency is to enable transactions. Internally, I get why people involved might fuss about the metric. But from the societal perspective it's reasonable to ask, "What does it cost per unit of value created?"

Okay as far as it goes, but it doesn't explain how to fix the problem. We need to drum up interest for a solution. The way I like to explain it is that Bitcoin is collectively giving away about $1.5 billion a month in prize money to miners. That's the root of the problem. Miners will spend up to $1.5 billion a month on electricity (mainly) and their other expenses. Currently it's about 10x Google's electricity usage.…

> We need to drum up interest for a solution.

There is already massive interest in finding more efficient ways to solve the problem. It's a difficult problem to solve (as Elon Musk will likely learn in the coming year).

The cost of proof of work is paid in two forms. The first is in the form of inflation. Merely holding onto Bitcoin means eating dilution as new Bitcoins are printed to fund the mining ecosystem. And the second cost is in terms of transaction fees. At times, it can cost $20+ to send a transaction over the Bitcoin network, and a more efficient / higher throughput system could significantly reduce these fees.

The users of Bitcoin are already themselves naturally incentivized to look for better solutions, even completely absent any care about the environment.

Re: Coin Carbon Cap – PoW cryptocurrencies ranked by energy efficiency

#186

Post by baby » Mon, May 17, 2021, 2:08 AM UTC

xx789 wrote: post #173

So basically they're all bad except for SV? 1 Gallon of gas makes 2.4 kg emissions, so instead of swiping a card its burning a few gallons of gas, or 50 gallons for BTC.

Rather, they are all bad. Proof of stake cryptocurrencies is the state of the art in consensus protocols today, not proof of work. This is mostly a ranking of who’s the worst among the worse technologies.

Re: Coin Carbon Cap – PoW cryptocurrencies ranked by energy efficiency

#187

Post by reader_mode » Mon, May 17, 2021, 2:09 AM UTC

skybrian wrote: post #171

wpietri wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> A better metric would be "energy use per double-spend that was prevented." Not for a general audience. The purpose of a currency is to enable transactions. Internally, I get why people involved might fuss about the metric. But from the societal perspective it's reasonable to ask, "What does it cost per unit of value created?"

Okay as far as it goes, but it doesn't explain how to fix the problem. We need to drum up interest for a solution. The way I like to explain it is that Bitcoin is collectively giving away about $1.5 billion a month in prize money to miners. That's the root of the problem. Miners will spend up to $1.5 billion a month on electricity (mainly) and their other expenses. Currently it's about 10x Google's electricity usage.…

The saddest or the most idiotic part of this whole story is the "bitcoin to the moon" crowd. Bitcoin price almost directly increases the effort spent on mining - if you're going into bitcoin now hoping it will 2x this literally means you're hoping it will 2x the hardware and energy consumption.

Re: Coin Carbon Cap – PoW cryptocurrencies ranked by energy efficiency

#188

Post by reader_mode » Mon, May 17, 2021, 2:10 AM UTC

Taek wrote: post #185

skybrian wrote: post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Okay as far as it goes, but it doesn't explain how to fix the problem. We need to drum up interest for a solution. The way I like to explain it is that Bitcoin is collectively giving away about $1.5 billion a month in prize money to miners. That's the root of the problem. Miners will spend up to $1.5 billion a month on electricity (mainly) and their other expenses. Currently it's about 10x Google's electricity usage.…

> We need to drum up interest for a solution. There is already massive interest in finding more efficient ways to solve the problem. It's a difficult problem to solve (as Elon Musk will likely learn in the coming year). The cost of proof of work is paid in two forms. The first is in the form of inflation. Merely holding onto Bitcoin means eating dilution as new Bitcoins are printed to fund the mining ecosystem. And t…

>The users of Bitcoin are already themselves naturally incentivized to look for better solutions

This would imply the users of Bitcoin use it for anything more than speculative investment.

Re: Coin Carbon Cap – PoW cryptocurrencies ranked by energy efficiency

#189

Post by BluSyn » Mon, May 17, 2021, 2:11 AM UTC

toomim wrote: post #36

As a Bitcoin miner ( https://toom.im ), while I appreciate the work put into it, this particular metric of "transactions per kW" might not work the way you expect. The main point that you should understand is that a PoW blockchain's energy usage is not proportional to its transactions. I'll say that a different way: the transactions themselves do not use any energy in mining. I'll say this in a third way: it takes ex…

"Energy used / total value secured" is a better measurement. "Double-spend prevented" isn't calculable.

Important to remember that the energy used on mining both secures current and *PAST* transactions, that's the entire point of the blockchain. I think "total value secured" captures this point.

I find it frustrating that crypto-currencies are judged by their energy usage, meanwhile traditional fiat currencies are secured by massive banking industries, governments, and militaries. The total energy required to maintain a secure and stable fiat currency is likely orders of magnitude greater than that of Bitcoin today. The problem is one is easier to calculate, so it generates easy headlines from lazy journalists.

Fundamentally energy usage isn't a worthy argument for or against a currency. It's the wrong measurement to use. It seems to be the go-to straw-man argument for those who already made up their minds about cryptocurrency before hand.

Yes, Proof-of-Stake exists, but notably it does not exist at a reasonable scale yet. If it could work as well as Proof-of-Work then it eventually would displace it. All attempts so far have not lived up to their hype.

Re: Coin Carbon Cap – PoW cryptocurrencies ranked by energy efficiency

#190

Post by baby » Mon, May 17, 2021, 2:11 AM UTC

encryptluks2 wrote: post #153

baby wrote: post #62

> It is great to see effort being put into researching cleaner alternatives. Unfortunately, there is no working PoS-based system that does not rely on some degree of centralization in its security model. This is false. See Algorand, Cardano, Mina, etc. Proof-of-work is very much a technology of the past. It's the fossil fuel of cryptocurrencies.

Algorand isn't currently decentralized. They have a list of approx 100 relays required for the network to function that they control tied to a centralized single domain.

Do you have a good source on that? This is not the first time I hear this. Btw I’ve studied the consensus protocol and it fulfills promises of decentralization so I’m wondering why they are using some single points of failure pieces (it is decentralized from a safety perspective: you can’t double spend, but it’s possible that some pieces are centralized). My guess is efficiency.