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The Ethereum merge is done

coindesk.com

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Re: The Ethereum merge is done

#991

Post by Bellamy »

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…

> If a criminal spies on my credit card # as I make a purchase and uses that to go on a spending spree I can fix it with the credit card company with little cost but a few hours of time and frustration.

No, you can't.

It if someone hacks you mobile bank and transfers money to another country, all you can do is go to police, which can do fuck off.

Re: The Ethereum merge is done

#993

Post by sershe »

fcantournet wrote: post #863
ibeckermayer wrote: post #828

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "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".

No it wouldn't. There is no definition of democracy where 51% of the people enslaving the 49% would constitute a democracy. Except the one you just imagined for the purposes of "winning" an argument on the internet. This is why people who give a shit about Democracy talk about minority rights, and free media, and non-discrimination. These are the core tenets of democracy.

Nope, you are using a definition of democracy that is "all the things I like". Democracy is widely understood as voting-based mechanism for conflict resolution, it's just the implications that are not widely appreciated - if you take out "doing all the things I support", what remains under "democracy" is "doing all the things I don't support but the majority does". For every person, democracy IS just the ugly parts - the rest is "what I'd do anyway in my personal dictatorship utopia".

On a completely separate track, what is described above is just an extreme example of what is actually happening. Some proxy of majority voting forced me to finance, in addition to the things I would gladly finance out of necessity like police and roads; or even unnecessary things I'd gladly donate to like NASA or National Parks; such things as e.g. the continuation of the war in Afghanistan, student loan forgiveness, healthcare subsidies, TSA security theater, etc. They did it by taking some part of my earnings, i.e. forcing me to work extra instead of having more free time for the same salary. Then they used the money to bomb a foreign wedding or give some deadbeat a chance at grievance studies. I guess it's good it is only a part-time enslavement.

Re: The Ethereum merge is done

#994

Post by ninkendo »

mrb wrote: post #926
ninkendo wrote: post #891

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Ethereum miners only represent a drop in the bucket of the global electricity consumption: only 0.1% 1 out of every 1000 watts of energy produced in the whole world going to ethereum mining is tragic. It’s an absolutely massive waste, and the fact that crypto miners think a number like that isn’t a big deal is horrifying to me.

You care about 1 in 1000 ? Did you know that 660 out of 1000 watts of primary energy used to create electricity are wasted by the time the electricity arrives at the customer meter? (source: https://www.enerdynamics.com/Energy-Currents_Blog/How-Much-P... ) Logically, you should be 660 times more "horrified" by this waste than by cryto mining, and yet you are not. In fact most likely until today you were not even awar…

The transmission losses are something inherent in the system that can’t be avoided, and if someone could solve that problem they’d help a great deal with greenhouse emissions and I’d certainly applaud that.

But this 1 in 1000 watts going to ethereum mining is entirely useless, contributing nothing to society except a Ponzi scheme that, like most Silicon Valley bullshit, only exists because regulations haven’t caught up yet. I don’t care that 1 in 1000 watts is a small number. The wattage going to Finland actually gives tens of millions of people electricity to live their lives. Crypto mining is just tech bros playing with funny money, robbing people of real money in the process.

Re: The Ethereum merge is done

#995

Post by anticensor »

mckirk wrote: post #274
roschdal wrote: post #266

Bitcoin is using too much energy, and this energy is needed for more important things like heating and transportation.

Well that's easy: a 2kW Bitcoin miner heats your house just as well as a 2kW electric furnace. (I'm kidding but I'm also not; I'm regularly amazed by the fact that the most complex and intricate computational machines have exactly the same 'output' as the most basic 'heat this piece of metal' contraptions, when looked at as a blackbox.)

https://bitcoinminingheater.com/ is a thing. It even has a built-in thermostat to regulate its mining output to your desired temperature.

Re: The Ethereum merge is done

#996

Post by galaxyLogic »

unity1001 wrote: post #990
ibeckermayer wrote: post #828

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "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".

If you have a society where there is that clear distinction in between the 51% and 49%, then you dont have one country. You have two countries. Its not applicable.

Very good point and scenario. The 49& would revolt and form their own "country" and government.

And then the 51% of the other country would perhaps try to enslave the original 49%. But that would not be democratic any more. That would be juts one country starting a war against another.

Re: The Ethereum merge is done

#997

Post by idiotsecant »

max47 wrote: post #925
idiotsecant wrote: post #866

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>they needed to do some physical work Why can't these hypothetical powerful people rent time on a mining farm? PoW is PoS, it just has some extra steps that have the minor side effect of using huge amount of resources for no reason.

With pow, the cash you burn on that mining farm is gone after you give up on your vote or your attack. With PoS, the simple act of being rich means you get more vote, you don't need to burn it or spend it. You even get richer while you do it

If you fail to validate with the network consensus in PoS you quite literally burn your money. That's sort of the whole point.

Re: The Ethereum merge is done

#998

Post by drewm1980 »

Waterluvian wrote: post #451
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…

Not using up a goat load of electricity is like 99% of why this change is great. Let people speculate on their funny money without harming everyone. A lateral move on the other details is rather unsurprising.

Do they have an API for refusing to accept ETH mined via proof of work? This is a start, but personally I'm still never going to accept BTC or ETH as payment; their history taints them forever. The real value burned in the mining of these currencies is lost forever, and the people who did the burning should absolutely not be rewarded.

Re: The Ethereum merge is done

#999

Post by drewm1980 »

once_inc wrote: post #469
Waterluvian wrote: post #451

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not using up a goat load of electricity is like 99% of why this change is great. Let people speculate on their funny money without harming everyone. A lateral move on the other details is rather unsurprising.

Using electricity isn't the problem. Anyone could use vast amounts of electricity as long as they are willing to pay the price for it. The problem is carbon emissions. The switch to PoS is a non-issue from my perspective: a centralized system changed from using method A to method B, I don't understand why I should care. Bitcoin mining is increasingly being used to prevent methane emissions in stranded gas reserves. H…

Oil companies are printing their own money now? God I hope you made that up.

Re: The Ethereum merge is done

#1000

Post by oliwarner »

razemio wrote: post #771
oliwarner wrote: post #727

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The people who were mining ETH didn't give a toss about the environment. They invested in PoW hardware and they're not going to stop using it because ETH is now PoS, they'll just mine something else. I just hope the PoW markets collapse now ETH is moving on.

That is rude. I care about the environment, still I am mining. How is it good for the environment? I only mine when my house and battery does not need electricity and our solar is producing over 1kw. Everything I earn (around 100-300$ a month between February to Oktober) I invest in the next environment project. My miners need about 500w. This is a fraction of the amount I put back into the grid. If I would not do th…

I didn't mean to be rude.

I think anyone involved in a PoW system (holding, mining, spending) is legitimising wasting energy. Even if you're using a sustainable source, others aren't, and the power you're using could have been used elsewhere.

Your personal impact might have been small, but it still takes serious compartmentalization or blissful ignorance to be involved in crypto and profess care for the environment.

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