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The Ethereum merge is done

coindesk.com

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Re: The Ethereum merge is done

#661

Post by dcolkitt »

TheDudeMan wrote: post #645
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…

If you were a crypto miner and had a pile of GPUs would they be powered-off right now? Of course not.

There's virtually no other ASIC resistant (i.e. can use GPU) PoW coin left to mine. There's the proof-of-work ETH fork, but it only has a market cap less than 2% of than real ETH. So even though they juiced the block rewards, miner rewards are more than 90% lower, which isn't enough to pay for electricity of the previous hash rate.

Re: The Ethereum merge is done

#662

Post by shabbatt »

mgraczyk wrote: post #655
shabbatt wrote: post #651

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wonder what will happen now that the ponzi structure is now gained new velocity as energy constraints have shut down proof of work mining. PoW creates centralized collusion between those who can afford the best miners and this helped the velocity of the chain itself since it is only as good as the last mined block. Now that layer is gone, its this proof-of-stake which is a bit funny since, Ponzi schemes are also pr…

You're confused, in a ponzi earlier investors are paid from the investments of future investors. That's not how PoS works. In Ethereum, everyone is diluted to pay stakers and the time of their investment does not matter.

> You're confused, in a ponzi earlier investors are paid from the investments of future investors.

so you mean like pre-mine token sales? wait aren't those securities because there is an expectation of returns from the work of others?

what you write here could be used against you, consult your lawyer before you admit anything!

Re: The Ethereum merge is done

#663

Post by tirpen »

OccamsMirror wrote: post #581
JeremyNT wrote: post #579

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So we now have a technical marvel used for financial speculation, conducting illicit transactions, and dodging regulators... that no longer is also burning the planet. Am I supposed to be impressed by this? It's easy to worship engineering as some kind of pure endeavor divorced from the real world, and admire cleverness for its own sake. But things that actively make the world worse should not necessarily be praised,…

Quoted post unavailable.

Virtues are generally more impressive than a cynical mockery of virtues at least.

Re: The Ethereum merge is done

#664

Post by simonw »

kranke155 wrote: post #555
sfjailbird wrote: post #526

This thread is HN jumping the shark for me. The merge is freaking incredible. Switching the engine of a $60 billion financial network in-flight. Permanent power savings the scale of a country. An incredible coordination between a huge number of diverse parties all over the world. Everything open source. And all we get is a rehash of tired old arguments against cryptocurrencies. This was originally a forum for hackers…

I’ve given up on HN understating crypto before they mint some Giga unicorn and everyone understand where the future is. The hive mind here is dangerously anti crypto. It’s the biggest wealth producing opportunity of the next decade or two and HN doesn’t get it at all. It’s basically become a forum for your average developer. I’d bet a lot of folk who don’t understand crypto at all are web developers or something wher…

> It’s the biggest wealth producing opportunity of the next decade or two and HN doesn’t get it at all.

Help me understand where that wealth comes from. Because as far as I can see the only wealth that gets generated is from people who got in earlier selling their bags to people who got in later.

Re: The Ethereum merge is done

#665

Post by matkoniecz »

browningstreet wrote: post #644

Are there resources that tell you how to do moderately complex things in ethereum/crypto properly/safely? I've dug in every once in a while, but the people doing things in crypto seem to have crypto "stacks", and those stacks aren't transparently obvious. I haven't been able to find the useful entry point into these things.

> how to do moderately complex things in ethereum/crypto properly/safely?

As far as I know it is not achievable.

Even doing it in normal banking system is quite tricky with BTC/ETH it is basically hopeless.

Re: The Ethereum merge is done

#666

Post by ajross »

matkoniecz wrote: post #656
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…

No, that is more diffuse. Whoever was using this electronics switched to other BTC variants, but in long term this reduced profitability and should harm people using energy in this way. But sadly no immediate impact, unless there are electronics that could be profitably consuming power for Ethereum and it is not profitable for alternatives.

In some sense that's true, but missing the point. The amount of energy worth buying to mine crypto is exactly equal to the value of the crypto mined. What we should expect to see[1] is that the value of "Proof-of-Work ETH" (which is still a functioning blockchain[2], just like Ethereum Classic is) will drop as attention is focused on PoS ETH. And so energy devoted to it will drop in tandem.

It's also true that there are second order effects, like for example all the mining hardware dedicated to ETH needs to find a new home, which will depress prices for new mining hardware for "chains that are hardware-compatible with old ETH", and thus probably support their prices a bit.

[1] And do, I think. IIRC there was a stat rolling around a few months back showing electrical grid usage dropping due to the crypto crash, but can't remember where it was or how reliable the source seemed.

[2] Though AFAICT no one is tracking exchange rates for it yet, so your guess is as good as mine as to its value.

Re: The Ethereum merge is done

#667

Post by mightypirate »

shabbatt wrote: post #662
mgraczyk wrote: post #655

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're confused, in a ponzi earlier investors are paid from the investments of future investors. That's not how PoS works. In Ethereum, everyone is diluted to pay stakers and the time of their investment does not matter.

> You're confused, in a ponzi earlier investors are paid from the investments of future investors. so you mean like pre-mine token sales? wait aren't those securities because there is an expectation of returns from the work of others? what you write here could be used against you, consult your lawyer before you admit anything!

No post body was provided.

Re: The Ethereum merge is done

#668

Post by ajross »

TheDudeMan wrote: post #645
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…

If you were a crypto miner and had a pile of GPUs would they be powered-off right now? Of course not.

It will if you can't mine enough to cover the cost of the electricity required to run it, which is true if you want to mine BTC with it, for example.

Re: The Ethereum merge is done

#669

Post by Jasper_ »

ineedasername wrote: post #444

Prior to the merge ethereum’s trust was controlled by the organizations with the most money who bought/built massive data centers to mine it. With the merge & staking that abstraction layer has disappeared and it’s still the organizations with the most money who control it. Sure it’s great that non-productive math problems no longer need to be solved & consume so much energy and hardware to make it all work. And it m…

My view is that crypto's goals (e.g. decentralized, deflationary, no transaction reversals) are non-goals, but even if those non-goals were goals, both PoW and PoS fail to effectively solve them, especially the decentralized part. PoS sucks more than PoW on this axis: PoS encourages centralization within the system (those with more ETH control the chain), and PoW encourages centralization outside the system (those who command more assets to buy GPUs and energy controls the system), so it's really silly and funny and pathetic both fail at the same thing, with PoS moving the needle in the wrong direction, but also, it was a non-goal to begin with so who cares I'll just go with the one that doesn't set the planet on fire please.

Re: The Ethereum merge is done

#670

Post by Salgat »

chaseadam17 wrote: post #478
ineedasername wrote: post #444

Prior to the merge ethereum’s trust was controlled by the organizations with the most money who bought/built massive data centers to mine it. With the merge & staking that abstraction layer has disappeared and it’s still the organizations with the most money who control it. Sure it’s great that non-productive math problems no longer need to be solved & consume so much energy and hardware to make it all work. And it m…

You can build the visa / Mastercard layer with “human judgement” on top.

That defeats the point. People keep forgetting that the single innovative aspect of cryptocurrencies was the invention of a way to do completely anonymous and trustless transactions. That's it. The second you wrap that in a layer that eliminates that, you're better off just skipping the blockchain altogether since it's an otherwise extremely awful performing persistence.
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