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Proof of stake is incapable of producing a consensus

yanmaani.github.io

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Re: Proof of stake is incapable of producing a consensus

#371

Post by dagmx »

chrischattin wrote: post #178
dagmx wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But won't each of those take up significantly more energy once they use Bitcoin than today? I.e the costs will be additive , and crypto aims to replace fiat. So crypto would need to be more efficient at the same scale as fiat to make sense. Also aren't each of those used by significantly more people than Bitcoin? So the per capita use is less and they scale better? Also how are you estimating cost of porn? Viewing co…

No. Bitcoin network power usage isn’t related to the number of transactions.

You're only talking about at any given moment in tjme, but Bitcoin hashing difficulty adjusts in an almost correlated way to number of transactions being performed (or more directly related to popularity at a given time)

https://m.btc.com/stats/diff

So your statement ends up being incorrect over a period of time.

Re: Proof of stake is incapable of producing a consensus

#373

Post by dan-robertson »

wcoenen wrote: post #268

Whether PoS will work, I don't know. But the author didn't realize that PoW is certainly doomed. PoW miners tend to spend more and more resources on finding blocks, until the cost approaches the rewards. But the rewards go up as the cryptocurrency becomes more popular, because the price and transaction fees go up. Therefore, a PoW cryptocurrency tends to "eat the world" as it becomes bigger. That's why Bitcoin is alr…

A positive side effect of your (1.) scenario is that it results in a surplus of renewable energy (mining needs the cheapest energy and renewable energy is generally the cheapest). Having a surplus of cheap green energy is probably good for the economy, though a lot more than 1% would probably be needed to see significant benefits.

Re: Proof of stake is incapable of producing a consensus

#374

Post by bitcurious »

tommek4077 wrote: post #287
wcoenen wrote: post #268

Whether PoS will work, I don't know. But the author didn't realize that PoW is certainly doomed. PoW miners tend to spend more and more resources on finding blocks, until the cost approaches the rewards. But the rewards go up as the cryptocurrency becomes more popular, because the price and transaction fees go up. Therefore, a PoW cryptocurrency tends to "eat the world" as it becomes bigger. That's why Bitcoin is alr…

It is not about spent electricity bills, it is about spent time. This is the problem that needs to be solved, how can you make the work more time consuming without beeing able to go around this with computing here: electric power.

Chia uses “Proof of Space Time” which leans in the direction you’re describing.

Re: Proof of stake is incapable of producing a consensus

#375

Post by semi-extrinsic »

sandworm101 wrote: post #331
snet0 wrote: post #307

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can't take a discussion of climate change seriously unless it specifically addresses a single-percentage problem?

A rapidly-growing 1% problem, one that has the potential to nullify other costly gains. Such problems need to die young, before they grow into 5/10/50% problems.

No, like others have stated, the climate challenge is switching our entire energy production (plus other fossile fuel end-uses) to net-zero or net-negative emissions.

If Bitcoin disappeared tomorrow, it would give a small reduction in energy use, but at best it buys you 6 months extra to decarbonize electricity production.

Re: Proof of stake is incapable of producing a consensus

#377

Post by TrackerFF »

hanniabu wrote: post #77
_2d30 wrote: post #21

I'm blown away by how quickly this rose on HN and how unconvincing it is.

It's a fud piece by a bitcoin maxi and HN is anti-crypto so it resonates with them and gives the echo chamber some good confirmation bias kool aid.

I wouldn't say that HN is staunchly anti-crypto, more crypto skeptical. Many of us were in the scene from the beginning, and have made good money on the hype.

But one thing that's extremely apparent, is that for the past 10 years, the crypto community has been 95% greed, 5% innovation. With the innovation part having picked up speed only the past few years.

At first, it was the an-cap dream. Decentralized, trustless, govt free internet money. No longer were you a prisoner to slow bank-transfers, expensive middle-men (PayPal, etc.), and could purchase whatever you wanted.

Then the price shot up, and everyone wanted to become rich. So people "agreed" that BTC is no longer a coin made for spending, but rather a storage of value. Like gold. Use altcoins if you actually want to spend your crypto. But who wants to spend any, with the rising prices?

Meanwhile, centralized banks, 3rd party businesses, etc. have solved all the personal finance issues that plagued us 10 years ago. In most countries today, you can transfer money pretty much instantaneously, without getting anxiety every time you press "send".

I'll give DeFi, Dapps, etc. credit - they've finally managed to roll out usable things, but it's still way, way too hard for regular users. And most regular people do not give two shits whether something is decentralized and trustless.

I can think of multiple legit uses for the blockchain technology - but I'm gonna be honest, I'm having a harder and harder time seeing how cryptocurrencies will replace any national currency. As of right now, it's almost purely speculation and get-rich-quick schemes.

We're still in the wild west, but it's not gonna stay that for long. With regulations looming around, it's just a mater of time.

But I digress

Re: Proof of stake is incapable of producing a consensus

#378

Post by AshamedCaptain »

wcoenen wrote: post #268

Whether PoS will work, I don't know. But the author didn't realize that PoW is certainly doomed. PoW miners tend to spend more and more resources on finding blocks, until the cost approaches the rewards. But the rewards go up as the cryptocurrency becomes more popular, because the price and transaction fees go up. Therefore, a PoW cryptocurrency tends to "eat the world" as it becomes bigger. That's why Bitcoin is alr…

3. Speculators move to yet another doge coin where the cost is still lower than the rewards.

Hasn't that happened already a number of times? If everyone was still aboard the Bitcoin bandwagon, it would have stopped being profitable long ago; however you have plenty of other bandwagons to jump into. They are all technically practically interchangeable.

I assume this is also the reason PoS will never work. People will just stay with PoW until really forced to, and if forced it's highly likely they will just jump into another PoW bandwagon. Guess this is part of the resistance seen with Ethereum. The alternative is to find a PoS schema which is even more lucrative for speculators (possible what the article is describing), and then everyone will jump into that bandwagon en-masse, but it will not have fixed anything.

Re: Proof of stake is incapable of producing a consensus

#379

Post by paulgb »

tzs wrote: post #366
drclau wrote: post #299

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Bitcoin is already approaching 1% of global electricity consumption, if it hasn't passed that point already And this is the reason why I cannot take any climate change conversation seriously unless it includes the topic of cryptocurrencies. Whatever the promises of cryptocurrencies were, now most (all?) degenerated into a mechanism for speculation, and effectively into a self-sustaining and self-promoting mechanism…

> And this is the reason why I cannot take any climate change conversation seriously unless it includes the topic of cryptocurrencies. Bitcoin's electricity use (or the electricity use of any other single application) is pretty much irrelevant when it comes to addressing climate change. Proof: • Too much of what we does depends on electricity and has no even remotely feasible substitutes for it to be plausible to giv…

Yes we need to clean up electricity production, but drawing on more electricity doesn’t make that better, it makes it worse. Case in point, there are coal and natural gas plants in Montana and the Finger Lakes that would have been shut down or downsized, but haven’t been due to bitcoin mining.

Re: Proof of stake is incapable of producing a consensus

#380

Post by a9h74j »

EVa5I7bHFq9mnYK wrote: post #368
tommek4077 wrote: post #351

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So, you would take a job paying a cent per day, because your time is free?

We are talking about computer time here. It's cheap to spin up 1000 tiny aws instances.

Waiting for PoWaaS.
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