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The Ethereum merge is done

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Re: The Ethereum merge is done

#821
post #817

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The entire world generates about 25,000 TWh of electricity every year. Finland consumes about 87 TWh of electricity every year. An entire Finland of electricity use thinly distributed over the entire planet disappearing is a negligible rounding error on the grand scheme of things. It's about a ~0.3% change. News media uses word imagery like "an entire Finland of electricity use" because it sounds huge and scary to th…

The thing is, in the wider cacophony of human civilization, Ethereum and cryptocurrencies also don't exist. If I and my grandma and everyone's grandma would use Proof of Work cryptocurrencies to buy peanuts at the supermarket, PoW energy usage would probably rival that of China. Now it's just used for speculation by a bunch of rich folks, crooks and marks. Probably only a few thousand transactions per second, I imagi…

Given that Visa does around 1,700 TPS, I imagine it's probably lower than that.

Re: The Ethereum merge is done

#822
post #28

> The Merge is one of the largest technological events in the industry to date. I feel kinda ashamed. I work in the IT industry and I claim to have knowledge about ("good") software engineering practices, distributed systems, compilers, algorithms, etc. Nevertheless, I didn't understand a word of what the article is saying. Could you recommend serious references (preferably books and not random blogs) I could read to…

I’ve started a podcast exactly for people like you: https://cryptologie.net/article/567/im-launching-a-podcast-t...

They are 20min episodes that build up to explain the foundations of cryptocurrencies.

If you have any suggestions for future episode let me know. I’m thinking of spending a bit more episodes on Bitcoin to talk about bitcoin scripts, layer 2 apps, UTXOs, etc. Before talking about ethereum

Re: The Ethereum merge is done

#823
post #808

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Quoted post unavailable.

If you keep posting this sort of low-value flamewar comment we are going to have to ban you. We have cut you miles of slack for years, but the slack is not infinite. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html Edit: I know this sounds harsh, but there's a ton of history here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29687129 .

>If you keep posting this sort of low-value flamewar comment we are going to have to ban you. We have cut you miles of slack for years, but the slack is not infinite.

Turnabout should be fair play here. Dang's continual low-value abuse of users to enforce suppression of seibelj and others' speech should be met with flagging and every possible option to reduce the effect of these threats.

If it is possible to ban dang, we need to be finding ways to do so. If not, consider his abuse behavior like the payment processor 'Stripe.' Robust alternatives must be used to minimize the deterretive effect of threats.

Either way, we should stop cutting slack to Dang's efforts and focus on how to ensure adjusting of behavior is bilateral. Our slack for Dang is not infinite. If Dang does not enjoy the comments of others perhaps he should move to another platform :)

Re: The Ethereum merge is done

#824
post #817

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The entire world generates about 25,000 TWh of electricity every year. Finland consumes about 87 TWh of electricity every year. An entire Finland of electricity use thinly distributed over the entire planet disappearing is a negligible rounding error on the grand scheme of things. It's about a ~0.3% change. News media uses word imagery like "an entire Finland of electricity use" because it sounds huge and scary to th…

The thing is, in the wider cacophony of human civilization, Ethereum and cryptocurrencies also don't exist. If I and my grandma and everyone's grandma would use Proof of Work cryptocurrencies to buy peanuts at the supermarket, PoW energy usage would probably rival that of China. Now it's just used for speculation by a bunch of rich folks, crooks and marks. Probably only a few thousand transactions per second, I imagi…

“a few thousand transactions per second” is all of Visa+Mastercard. Bitcoin is just “a few” and ETH is barely “a dozen”.

Edit: Sorry folks, that claim was based on outdated data! The latest figures for both Visa and Mastercard are ~5,000 transactions per second each.

Re: The Ethereum merge is done

#826

A good moment of humility I hope for all those HN experts who implied Ethereum's transition to Proof of Stake would never happen.

I feel like you have an overly emotional attachment to this, given your need to make this comment. People say things that turn out to be wrong all the time, but you seem to have become resentful that they disbelieved this would happen. Odd way to approach a technology.

I’d interpret your response as being more emotional than the parent’s comment.

Re: The Ethereum merge is done

#828

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…

> liberation of people from massively powerful banks and governments The difference between business and governments is that in business every dollar has a vote, whereas in a democracy every adult has a vote. "liberation of people" can only happen by having a working democracy. And a working democracy can only exist when there is (democratically elected) government. So it's not like people should be liberated from go…

> "liberation of people" can only happen by having a working democracy

If 51% democratically voted to enslave the other 49%, that would be a working democracy but far from "liberation of people".

Re: The Ethereum merge is done

#829
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…

The entire world generates about 25,000 TWh of electricity every year. Finland consumes about 87 TWh of electricity every year. An entire Finland of electricity use thinly distributed over the entire planet disappearing is a negligible rounding error on the grand scheme of things. It's about a ~0.3% change. News media uses word imagery like "an entire Finland of electricity use" because it sounds huge and scary to th…

No post body was provided.

Re: The Ethereum merge is done

#830
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…

I find it incredible how many arguments rely on a uniform distribution assumption here. There are markets where crypto miners are double digit percentage of utilization. They have very favorable conditions for mining, like the Pacific North West. The “one Finland” isn’t smeared over all power consumption, it’s highly congregated in a relatively small number of locations. The argument that a sudden devaluing of the use of electricity has no impact in the power infrastructure where it’s concentrated is absurd. I’m not saying it has or hasn’t happened - I’ve no idea. But it will be news if it does happen because operators will see double digit drops in demand locally and it’ll be noteworthy. But I don’t think it’ll be like energy prices in the EU improve - the mining happens in places with huge gluts of power they can’t otherwise sell or distribute for more.
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