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The Ethereum merge is done

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Re: The Ethereum merge is done

#841

Post by bitcoin_anon »

oblio wrote: post #817
anonporridge wrote: post #804

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…

> 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.

I can't speak for all PoW cryptocurrencies, but this is a common misunderstanding about Bitcoin. Energy usage does not scale with the number of users. The transactions per second is largely fixed due to the block size limit. If your grandma is using Bitcoin, she will probably be transacting on a second layer, e.g. Lightning or Coinbase.

Re: The Ethereum merge is done

#842

Post by lostmsu »

Animats wrote: post #22

The bottom just fell out of the used GPU market. NVidia Tesla 80 24GB on sale for US$79 in quantity. [1] [1] https://www.ebay.com/sch/i.html?_from=R40&_trksid=p2380057.m...

Tesla 80 is basically useless at this point. AWS stopped recommending it in 2017. It is nearly 10 times slower than 3090.

Re: The Ethereum merge is done

#843

Post by vkou »

notch656a wrote: post #835
oblio wrote: post #820

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To add to your comment, we want a *powerful* and accountable government. Weak governments make for failed states, because corporations and other interest groups such as gangs, warlords, control things instead.

I want a weak government. I'd rather have warlords compete for my allegiance than be subject to one all powerful warlord who has no powerful enemies to worry about. A capitalism of polycentric governance, if you will.

Warlords typically 'compete' for your allegiance by conscripting you to fight for them, and killing you and your family when you refuse.

Or, if you and nobody in your family is of 'military age', they 'compete' for it, by rolling into your town, and stealing half of what you own. The 'competing' warlord that rolls in next week will, of course, steal the other half. If you're lucky, they won't make an example out of your town for 'supporting' the first warlord.

I'll take a strong, stable government over that horror-show any day of the week, but if you'd like to give it a try, much of Mexico has quite a bit of that sort of thing going on right now. Anyone who moves to the right parts of it can enjoy life amid 'competing' cartels.

Re: The Ethereum merge is done

#844

Post by azylman »

e1g wrote: post #824
oblio wrote: post #817

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I can pretty confidently say that all of Visa+Mastercard is way more than a few thousand transactions per second, I'm familiar with several companies that push hundreds of transactions per second through Visa+Mastercard and there's no way they're a significant portion of their business.

This article claims Mastercard alone is 5k: https://cointelegraph.com/news/bitcoin-lightning-network-vs-...

Re: The Ethereum merge is done

#845

Post by miohtama »

Terr_ wrote: post #819
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.

> in a ponzi earlier investors are paid from the investments of future investors. Also, a Ponzi scheme requires fraud, where the earlier investors are being lied-to about where the money comes from in order to paint a false financial picture of the company. Not directly related to your point, but I wanted to put that out there since it's a pet-peeve of mine that "Ponzi" gets frequently misused as a label for anything…

By the OP definition, pension funds would be ponzis.

Re: The Ethereum merge is done

#846

Post by oblio »

cantSpellSober wrote: post #837
oblio wrote: post #817

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> just used for speculation by a bunch of rich folks, crooks and marks Good try, but trite criticism regarding crypto is required to include the words "Ponzi" and "tulips". Let's try nuanced criticism please, crypto needs it. > Probably only a few thousand transactions per second, I imagine Quite an imagination! You're very far off, do you have any experience in this space?

> Good try, but trite criticism regarding crypto is required to include the words "Ponzi" and "tulips"

Thank you, I'm trying to come up with an "anti bullshit bingo" since the bullshit bingo from cryptocurrencies has already managed to raise tens of billions of dollars. Glad you like it.

> Quite an imagination! You're very far off, do you have any experience in this space?

I was trying to be generous since crypto supporters always like to point to the newest barely working bleeding edge centralized "layer" called lightning or thunderbolt or some other electricity derived thing, which is supposed to greatly accelerate the glacial rate of crypto transactions.

Again, can I use crypto of any kind to buy $2 peanuts at the supermarket in Bucharest and grandma $1 popcorn at the cinema in Djibouti, without turning Earth into Venus?

Re: The Ethereum merge is done

#847

Post by bearjaws »

phartenfeller wrote: post #273

I appreciate it wasting less precious energy. But this change also means that "Decentralisation" and "Power to the people" are fading away right? The wealthy actors are the ones dictating the transaction now and they also on top get paid for being rich. This does not sound like a "better financial system" for me. Also, don't forget the DAO Fork[0] where with the "ungovernable Blockhain" it was decided a transaction w…

Over 90% of NFTs flow through one provider, Pinata. OpenSea, GME, and many other exchanges are all powered by Pinata, without which you would have a terrible experience buying and trading NFTs. Of which, NFTs are primarily traded on two platforms.

It's already centralized, all of it, from the blockchain to the "dapps" built on top of them.

Re: The Ethereum merge is done

#848

Post by miohtama »

Salgat wrote: post #670
chaseadam17 wrote: post #478

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Here is another thread from HackerNews today:

”Stripe nuked my business”

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32854528

Visa/MasterCard is never going to be a solution for everyone, everywhere, even if it is a solution for a particular Orignal Poster.

Re: The Ethereum merge is done

#849

Post by MuffinFlavored »

jll29 wrote: post #125
lmarcos wrote: 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…

Read 'Mastering Ethereum' https://www.amazon.com/Mastering-Ethereum-Building-Smart-Con... The short of it is: - The block chain is a distributed ledger database, where all peers hold a full copy to avoid manipulation (faking an entry is only possible by controlling >50% of machines in this peer-to-peer network). - Spending money is implemented by adding a transactional record to the blockchain ledger at the end sayin…

> where all peers hold a full copy

how large is a full copy these days?

how are peers jump started and why is that mechanism trusted so well? like say I want to connect to the blockchain, I need to make an API request to some IP. how is that resolved and why is that regarded as "decentralized"? why is the mechanism for serving me peers trusted and why is every peer in the network trusted?

Re: The Ethereum merge is done

#850

Post by MuffinFlavored »

jll29 wrote: post #125
lmarcos wrote: 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…

Read 'Mastering Ethereum' https://www.amazon.com/Mastering-Ethereum-Building-Smart-Con... The short of it is: - The block chain is a distributed ledger database, where all peers hold a full copy to avoid manipulation (faking an entry is only possible by controlling >50% of machines in this peer-to-peer network). - Spending money is implemented by adding a transactional record to the blockchain ledger at the end sayin…

> contracts along the lines of "if (condition)

what are some examples of these conditions? how is it not like... i put money in escrow, if the buyer agrees i did my part, they click agree and that's the "condition"?

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