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Is there any work being done to make Bitcoin not consume all that energy? It's hard to support when it's so wasteful of a critical resource. Are they trying t

by eudora 8y ago

Is there any work being done to make Bitcoin not consume all that energy? It's hard to support when it's so wasteful of a critical resource. Are they trying to go proof of stake?

bogomipz 8y ago
I'm not familiar with "proof of stake", how does that make mining less wasteful in terms of resources?
- cdiddy2 8y ago
  Its doesn't have any mining at all. You put your coins in a smart contract that allows you to get randomly selected to create blocks from time to time, if you do something wrong then some of your coins are taken from you, if you do everything right you get a portion of the fees and/or a bit of inflation. There are lots of slightly different variants of it though
  - bogomipz 8y ago
    Interesting. Is there a practical reason limiting its' adoption?
    - cdiddy2 8y ago
      It doesnt have the same history of security that proof of work has so its just newer and hard to get the incentives correct to create a secure network. Ethereum is working on moving to it and some others as well.
      - bogomipz 8y ago
        Thanks. I just found the following article about "proof of stake" in case anyone else is: interested: https://hackernoon.com/what-is-proof-of-stake-8e0433018256 https://hackernoon.com/what-is-proof-of-stake-8e0433018256
plankers 8y ago
Bitcoin is _not_ trying to go proof of stake because proof of work is the most secure consensus algorithm that exists. Proof of stake has some lingering unsolved problems, search for "nothing at stake problem" and "long range attack." All the energy consumed by bitcoin is a feature, not a bug. The only way to defeat the immutability of the bitcoin blockchain and do naughty things would be to expend _more_ energy than is currently being used (or create a more effecient miner, mass produce it, set up mining farms, all without anybody finding out).
- eudora 8y ago
  If that's the case, I'm not into it. It's not sustainable. What an incredible waste of resources. And presumably the energy cost correlates to the usage of the currency? How can it possibly become anything like widely used if it's so pricey? (Come to think of it, one way is the lightning network. Which doesn't use the blockchain for almost everything: https://lightning.network/ https://lightning.network/)
  - cdiddy2 8y ago
    The energy cost does not correlate with the usage of the network. A block with 1 transaction in it needs the same amount of energy as a block with 3000 transactions in it. The peak energy cost is limited by the price of bitcoin though.
  - plankers 8y ago
    So by your metric the global banking industry, which uses several orders of magnitude more electricity than the bitcoin network, also isn't sustainable. A single bitcoin may be pricey, but fortunately there are eight decimal places after that first coin, enabling users to spend however much or however little they want. You're right about the lightning network, it stands to revolutionize the bitcoin network by providing an instantaneous zero-confirmation payment layer on top of the bitcoin blockchain. Critically, though, it wouldn't work at all without the security provided by all that "wasted" electricity. Think of the lightning network like the HTTP protocol layer resting on top of the TCP/IP communication layer. HTTP wouldn't work without TCP/IP and TCP/IP wouldn't be nearly as useful without the myriad of protocol layers which it enables. This is still early times for bitcoin, and you ain't seen nothin' yet.
duskwuff 8y ago
> Are they trying to go proof of stake? At this point, that would be impossible. Making even minor changes to the Bitcoin protocol effectively requires the consent of miners, as they're responsible for minting blocks. There's no way that entrenched mining interests would agree to a protocol change that cut them out of the picture.
village-idiot 8y ago
Proof of work cannot be made to consume less power. Every single increase in hash rate efficiency just results in the same kWh being used to make more hashes followed by an increase in block difficulty. This is literally a security feature of the network, since it’s designed to prevent 51% attacks. It might be technically possible to change the bitcoin protocol, but at this point the politics are insurmountable.
gwbas1c 8y ago
That's what the altcoins are for. Bitcoin isn't like your average software where some party releases an update that magically downloads from some app store. It's a protocol where everyone has to mutually agree to update. The best example of an "update" is Bitcoin cash, where the creator just gave all bitcoin owners free btc. Ultimately, the real problem is that most people involved either don't understand economics, or are preying on people who don't understand economics. Until there's real commerce with a cryprocurrency, they have no value. Thus anyone hoarding them is basically gambling in a zero sum game.

by eudora 8y ago

Is there any work being done to make Bitcoin not consume all that energy? It's hard to support when it's so wasteful of a critical resource. Are they trying to go proof of stake?

bogomipz 8y ago

I'm not familiar with "proof of stake", how does that make mining less wasteful in terms of resources?

cdiddy2 8y ago
Its doesn't have any mining at all. You put your coins in a smart contract that allows you to get randomly selected to create blocks from time to time, if you do something wrong then some of your coins are taken from you, if you do everything right you get a portion of the fees and/or a bit of inflation. There are lots of slightly different variants of it though
- bogomipz 8y ago
  Interesting. Is there a practical reason limiting its' adoption?
  - cdiddy2 8y ago
    It doesnt have the same history of security that proof of work has so its just newer and hard to get the incentives correct to create a secure network. Ethereum is working on moving to it and some others as well.
    - bogomipz 8y ago
      Thanks. I just found the following article about "proof of stake" in case anyone else is: interested: https://hackernoon.com/what-is-proof-of-stake-8e0433018256 https://hackernoon.com/what-is-proof-of-stake-8e0433018256

plankers 8y ago

Bitcoin is _not_ trying to go proof of stake because proof of work is the most secure consensus algorithm that exists. Proof of stake has some lingering unsolved problems, search for "nothing at stake problem" and "long range attack." All the energy consumed by bitcoin is a feature, not a bug. The only way to defeat the immutability of the bitcoin blockchain and do naughty things would be to expend _more_ energy than is currently being used (or create a more effecient miner, mass produce it, set up mining farms, all without anybody finding out).

eudora 8y ago
If that's the case, I'm not into it. It's not sustainable. What an incredible waste of resources. And presumably the energy cost correlates to the usage of the currency? How can it possibly become anything like widely used if it's so pricey? (Come to think of it, one way is the lightning network. Which doesn't use the blockchain for almost everything: https://lightning.network/ https://lightning.network/)
- cdiddy2 8y ago
  The energy cost does not correlate with the usage of the network. A block with 1 transaction in it needs the same amount of energy as a block with 3000 transactions in it. The peak energy cost is limited by the price of bitcoin though.
- plankers 8y ago
  So by your metric the global banking industry, which uses several orders of magnitude more electricity than the bitcoin network, also isn't sustainable. A single bitcoin may be pricey, but fortunately there are eight decimal places after that first coin, enabling users to spend however much or however little they want. You're right about the lightning network, it stands to revolutionize the bitcoin network by providing an instantaneous zero-confirmation payment layer on top of the bitcoin blockchain. Critically, though, it wouldn't work at all without the security provided by all that "wasted" electricity. Think of the lightning network like the HTTP protocol layer resting on top of the TCP/IP communication layer. HTTP wouldn't work without TCP/IP and TCP/IP wouldn't be nearly as useful without the myriad of protocol layers which it enables. This is still early times for bitcoin, and you ain't seen nothin' yet.

duskwuff 8y ago

> Are they trying to go proof of stake? At this point, that would be impossible. Making even minor changes to the Bitcoin protocol effectively requires the consent of miners, as they're responsible for minting blocks. There's no way that entrenched mining interests would agree to a protocol change that cut them out of the picture.

village-idiot 8y ago

Proof of work cannot be made to consume less power. Every single increase in hash rate efficiency just results in the same kWh being used to make more hashes followed by an increase in block difficulty. This is literally a security feature of the network, since it’s designed to prevent 51% attacks. It might be technically possible to change the bitcoin protocol, but at this point the politics are insurmountable.

gwbas1c 8y ago

That's what the altcoins are for. Bitcoin isn't like your average software where some party releases an update that magically downloads from some app store. It's a protocol where everyone has to mutually agree to update. The best example of an "update" is Bitcoin cash, where the creator just gave all bitcoin owners free btc. Ultimately, the real problem is that most people involved either don't understand economics, or are preying on people who don't understand economics. Until there's real commerce with a cryprocurrency, they have no value. Thus anyone hoarding them is basically gambling in a zero sum game.