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Proof of Work is the process by which registered value (an electric bill) is converted to fungible value. It is nearly 100% efficient (depending on how you quan

Proof of Work is the process by which registered value (an electric bill) is converted to fungible value. It is nearly 100% efficient (depending on how you quantify waste). If you don't like the externality costs of mining - I'm with you. But that's the government's job to manage, and seemingly, they're ok with that. They even subsidize the network by requiring that some goods only be purchased via blockchain.

bduerst 10y ago
>[Proof of work] is nearly 100% efficient I'm curious how you're defining efficiency here. If it's "nearly 100% efficient", does that mean it's 99% efficient? 99.999% efficient? If 100 people compete on a block and 1 person is awarded the block, then isn't it 1% efficient and 99% wasteful?
- wyager 10y ago
  > If 100 people compete on a block and 1 person is awarded the block, then isn't it 1% efficient and 99% wasteful? From the network's perspective, everyone collaborated to make that block more secure. The more hashing power you have, the harder it is to subvert the network. "Wastefulness" in this case can only be expressed by comparing energy spent per hash to the most efficient extant computer which could hypothetically be used by an attacker. In this case, Bitcoin is already mined using specialized ultra-efficient ASICs, so by this standard it is not wasteful.
  - bduerst 10y ago
    > everyone collaborated to make that block more secure. The rational actors aren't collaborating to make the network more secure, they're competing to get the reward. In fact, the asics you mention is why the network isn't that secure. They create an economies of scale that allows the network to be controlled by a handful of Chinese miners, who in turn won't fork useful updates. That means the redundant work being done by the miners is wasted.
danbruc 10y ago
Proof of Work is the process by which registered value (an electric bill) is converted to fungible value. It is nearly 100% efficient (depending on how you quantify waste). That is not true. The proof of work is the mechanism required to prevent users from casting arbitrarily many (fraudulent) votes on blocks because Bitcoin is anonymous. If Bitcoin were not anonymous, you could just give one vote per block to every user and everything would be fine. But Bitcoin is anonymous and the proof of work essentially only replaces knowing all users by making it hard to cast a vote and in consequence even harder to cast many. So the proof of work is logically the component in Bitcoin establishing some kind of identity for users and has nothing to do with the creation of value.
- digi_owl 10y ago
  Proof of work also gives goldbugs that warm and fussy...
discodave 10y ago
It's 100% efficient at turning electricity into heat... that's about all it's efficient at though. If you need distributed state, use Paxos, raft or be OK with having a single point of failure.
- ChrisClark 10y ago
  It's 100% efficient at turning greed into security for the blockchain.
JBReefer 10y ago
It's 100% efficient at worsening climate change due to subsidized Chinese coal electricity in order to further a Ponzi scheme.
- AtheistOfFail 10y ago
  Lol, the entire Bitcoin mining ecosystem uses less electricy than the Bank of America headquarters. Also, ponzi schemes require that money from users be stolen to pay off new users. Instead we pay miners to secure all the Bitcoins in the network by burning power (IE, just like a job, you use 8 hours of energy and you get a paycheck)
  - sanswork 10y ago
    Where did you see that figure because that sounds hugely wrong.
    - redcalx 10y ago
      You can sort of ballpark the bitcoin energy usage by assuming all mined coins are sold at the current exchange rate, and used to buy electricity at a reasonable average for the world... 12.5 BTC every 10 mins => 12.5 / 600 per second => 0.02083. 0.02083. * $600 = $12.5 / sec Assuming electricity cost of $0.10 per kWH... %12.50 / 0.10 = 125 kWh / sec. 125kWH * 3.6e6 joules, per second => 450 MW For comparison, the UK power grid runs at about 30-40GW.

bduerst 10y ago

>[Proof of work] is nearly 100% efficient I'm curious how you're defining efficiency here. If it's "nearly 100% efficient", does that mean it's 99% efficient? 99.999% efficient? If 100 people compete on a block and 1 person is awarded the block, then isn't it 1% efficient and 99% wasteful?

wyager 10y ago
> If 100 people compete on a block and 1 person is awarded the block, then isn't it 1% efficient and 99% wasteful? From the network's perspective, everyone collaborated to make that block more secure. The more hashing power you have, the harder it is to subvert the network. "Wastefulness" in this case can only be expressed by comparing energy spent per hash to the most efficient extant computer which could hypothetically be used by an attacker. In this case, Bitcoin is already mined using specialized ultra-efficient ASICs, so by this standard it is not wasteful.
- bduerst 10y ago
  > everyone collaborated to make that block more secure. The rational actors aren't collaborating to make the network more secure, they're competing to get the reward. In fact, the asics you mention is why the network isn't that secure. They create an economies of scale that allows the network to be controlled by a handful of Chinese miners, who in turn won't fork useful updates. That means the redundant work being done by the miners is wasted.

danbruc 10y ago

Proof of Work is the process by which registered value (an electric bill) is converted to fungible value. It is nearly 100% efficient (depending on how you quantify waste). That is not true. The proof of work is the mechanism required to prevent users from casting arbitrarily many (fraudulent) votes on blocks because Bitcoin is anonymous. If Bitcoin were not anonymous, you could just give one vote per block to every user and everything would be fine. But Bitcoin is anonymous and the proof of work essentially only replaces knowing all users by making it hard to cast a vote and in consequence even harder to cast many. So the proof of work is logically the component in Bitcoin establishing some kind of identity for users and has nothing to do with the creation of value.

digi_owl 10y ago
Proof of work also gives goldbugs that warm and fussy...

discodave 10y ago

It's 100% efficient at turning electricity into heat... that's about all it's efficient at though. If you need distributed state, use Paxos, raft or be OK with having a single point of failure.

ChrisClark 10y ago
It's 100% efficient at turning greed into security for the blockchain.

JBReefer 10y ago

It's 100% efficient at worsening climate change due to subsidized Chinese coal electricity in order to further a Ponzi scheme.

AtheistOfFail 10y ago
Lol, the entire Bitcoin mining ecosystem uses less electricy than the Bank of America headquarters. Also, ponzi schemes require that money from users be stolen to pay off new users. Instead we pay miners to secure all the Bitcoins in the network by burning power (IE, just like a job, you use 8 hours of energy and you get a paycheck)
- sanswork 10y ago
  Where did you see that figure because that sounds hugely wrong.
  - redcalx 10y ago
    You can sort of ballpark the bitcoin energy usage by assuming all mined coins are sold at the current exchange rate, and used to buy electricity at a reasonable average for the world... 12.5 BTC every 10 mins => 12.5 / 600 per second => 0.02083. 0.02083. * $600 = $12.5 / sec Assuming electricity cost of $0.10 per kWH... %12.50 / 0.10 = 125 kWh / sec. 125kWH * 3.6e6 joules, per second => 450 MW For comparison, the UK power grid runs at about 30-40GW.