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>The #1 complaint about Bitcoin (especially on HN) is its excessive use of power. And how much power does Google or Facebook consume? How much power does each

>The #1 complaint about Bitcoin (especially on HN) is its excessive use of power. And how much power does Google or Facebook consume? How much power does each Google and Facebook click take? There are good power sources like renewables and nuclear. Power is not a problem. And I'm not sure POS is a good solution because Satoshi would've used it or would've switched to it.

wmf 6y ago
If relativity is such a good theory, why didn't Newton use it?
drdeca 6y ago
Is it not plausible that developing the math to get a stable version of PoS, could take longer than Satoshi had before he dropped off the face of the interwebs? It's not like he's God .
rcxdude 6y ago
>And how much power does Google or Facebook consume? In the case of google, almost an order of magnitude less than bitcoin, and it's 100% from buying renewable electricity (though because of the way energy markets work it's not quite like they don't depend on non-renewable sources). Renewable energy is in the minority of bitcoin energy usage (coal makes up a large fraction of this). > And I'm not sure POS is a good solution because Satoshi would've used it or would've switched to it. Satoshi is not omniscient. Just because Satoshi didn't come up with it doesn't mean it's a bad idea (in fact many of the ideas now integrated in bitcoin did not come from him).
- mrkramer 6y ago
  Then devs should research and develop PoW which is more efficient and takes less energy and come up with solution that does additional useful work on top of verifying transactions.
  - rcxdude 6y ago
    'PoW which takes less energy' is an oxymoron. The whole point is to demonstrate cryptographically a certain amount of effort (combination of energy and efficiency of hardware implementing a deliberatly inefficient function) has taken place. The network adjusts the difficulty dynamically depending on the amount of effort being put in (basically the rewards are fixed: miners simply compete for a bigger slice of the pie by trying to put in more effort than their competitors). The only limit is when the miners stop making money off of it (and with the price of bitcoin they can buy a lot of energy and still make a profit). This is all by design and the whole point is to make it a lot more profitable to secure the system than to attack it. The only way to really reduce the energy use of coin is to reduce the block rewards or reduce the price. But at a certain point it's more profitable to attack the system than secure it, so it's a difficult balancing act. This one which bitcoin makes no attempt at: the block reward is set to automatically decrease over time at a fixed rate and this hasn't and isn't likely to change. There's no particular reason bitcoin's rewards are either not overkill or sufficient to secure the network against an attacker. Etherium takes a more practical view: because the currency has built-in adjustments which can be made by the foundation, in theory it can adjust the block reward dynamically to the right amount, though there's both political issues in terms of appeasing the miners when you cut their profit and technical issues in actually working out what is good enough. Likewise 'doing additional useful work' is not something you can actually do in a trustless manner like with proof of work (at least not most useful work: certainly there's no task which you could use for mining which anyone actually needs the kind of energy bitcoin uses throwing at it). You need something which is easily distributable relative the to the amount of computing power needed to do it (and even SETI/Folding @ home are really struggling at this point with modern hardware: computing power has outgrown bandwidth substantially), and easy verifiable that the work has been done. There are cryptocurrencies which try to distribute coins based on contributions to distributed computing, but they rely on a central authority to do so, defeating the whole point of cryptocurrencies.
    - mrkramer 6y ago
      >The only way to really reduce the energy use of coin is to reduce the block rewards or reduce the price. You can rewrite difficulty formula and make it easier to mine and therefore decrease energy consumption. Bitcoin's protocol is set in stone but if some dev likes to play with protocol like Vitalik he or she can do it. It would shift market and coin price downwards but if energy consumption is really a problem it is tax you have to pay. >There's no particular reason bitcoin's rewards are either not overkill or sufficient to secure the network against an attacker. Satoshi introduced blockchain checkpoint which basically enforces consensus. "The security safeguard makes it so even if someone does have more than 50% of the network's CPU power, they can't try to go back and redo the block chain" [1] This is centralized decision but it is better than changing protocol completely like Vitalik did (going from PoW to PoS). >because the currency has built-in adjustments which can be made by the foundation, in theory it can adjust the block reward dynamically to the right amount, though there's both political issues in terms of appeasing the miners when you cut their profit and technical issues in actually working out what is good enough. So centralized foundation controls decentralized network? And what is right amount? >But at a certain point it's more profitable to attack the system than secure it, so it's a difficult balancing act. How come? When all coins are mined miners will switch to transaction fees and they will compete for transaction fees. If you want faster confirmation time you will pay higher transaction fee for your transaction meaning miners earning more, you can do this now as well. >Likewise 'doing additional useful work' is not something you can actually do in a trustless manner like with proof of work It doesn't have to be additional useful work it can be in the core design of the proof of work. In 2013 there was a coin called Primecoin which "computed chains of prime numbers (Cunningham and bi-twin chains), the results of which were published on its blockchain's public ledger, available for use by scientists, mathematicians, and anyone else."[2] "Use of a proof-of-work system to calculate chains of prime numbers was an innovation that produced useful results while also meeting the criteria for a proof-of-work system: it involved a calculation that was difficult to perform but easy to verify, and the difficulty was adjustable." It was first coin which had a proof of work with a practical use. It is still early days but this is the most recent paper I found about this matter: https://eprint.iacr.org/2017/203.pdf https://eprint.iacr.org/2017/203.pdf [1] https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=437.msg3807#msg3807 https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=437.msg3807#msg3807 [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Primecoin https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Primecoin

wmf 6y ago

If relativity is such a good theory, why didn't Newton use it?

drdeca 6y ago

Is it not plausible that developing the math to get a stable version of PoS, could take longer than Satoshi had before he dropped off the face of the interwebs? It's not like he's God .

rcxdude 6y ago

>And how much power does Google or Facebook consume? In the case of google, almost an order of magnitude less than bitcoin, and it's 100% from buying renewable electricity (though because of the way energy markets work it's not quite like they don't depend on non-renewable sources). Renewable energy is in the minority of bitcoin energy usage (coal makes up a large fraction of this). > And I'm not sure POS is a good solution because Satoshi would've used it or would've switched to it. Satoshi is not omniscient. Just because Satoshi didn't come up with it doesn't mean it's a bad idea (in fact many of the ideas now integrated in bitcoin did not come from him).

mrkramer 6y ago
Then devs should research and develop PoW which is more efficient and takes less energy and come up with solution that does additional useful work on top of verifying transactions.
- rcxdude 6y ago
  'PoW which takes less energy' is an oxymoron. The whole point is to demonstrate cryptographically a certain amount of effort (combination of energy and efficiency of hardware implementing a deliberatly inefficient function) has taken place. The network adjusts the difficulty dynamically depending on the amount of effort being put in (basically the rewards are fixed: miners simply compete for a bigger slice of the pie by trying to put in more effort than their competitors). The only limit is when the miners stop making money off of it (and with the price of bitcoin they can buy a lot of energy and still make a profit). This is all by design and the whole point is to make it a lot more profitable to secure the system than to attack it. The only way to really reduce the energy use of coin is to reduce the block rewards or reduce the price. But at a certain point it's more profitable to attack the system than secure it, so it's a difficult balancing act. This one which bitcoin makes no attempt at: the block reward is set to automatically decrease over time at a fixed rate and this hasn't and isn't likely to change. There's no particular reason bitcoin's rewards are either not overkill or sufficient to secure the network against an attacker. Etherium takes a more practical view: because the currency has built-in adjustments which can be made by the foundation, in theory it can adjust the block reward dynamically to the right amount, though there's both political issues in terms of appeasing the miners when you cut their profit and technical issues in actually working out what is good enough. Likewise 'doing additional useful work' is not something you can actually do in a trustless manner like with proof of work (at least not most useful work: certainly there's no task which you could use for mining which anyone actually needs the kind of energy bitcoin uses throwing at it). You need something which is easily distributable relative the to the amount of computing power needed to do it (and even SETI/Folding @ home are really struggling at this point with modern hardware: computing power has outgrown bandwidth substantially), and easy verifiable that the work has been done. There are cryptocurrencies which try to distribute coins based on contributions to distributed computing, but they rely on a central authority to do so, defeating the whole point of cryptocurrencies.
  - mrkramer 6y ago
    >The only way to really reduce the energy use of coin is to reduce the block rewards or reduce the price. You can rewrite difficulty formula and make it easier to mine and therefore decrease energy consumption. Bitcoin's protocol is set in stone but if some dev likes to play with protocol like Vitalik he or she can do it. It would shift market and coin price downwards but if energy consumption is really a problem it is tax you have to pay. >There's no particular reason bitcoin's rewards are either not overkill or sufficient to secure the network against an attacker. Satoshi introduced blockchain checkpoint which basically enforces consensus. "The security safeguard makes it so even if someone does have more than 50% of the network's CPU power, they can't try to go back and redo the block chain" [1] This is centralized decision but it is better than changing protocol completely like Vitalik did (going from PoW to PoS). >because the currency has built-in adjustments which can be made by the foundation, in theory it can adjust the block reward dynamically to the right amount, though there's both political issues in terms of appeasing the miners when you cut their profit and technical issues in actually working out what is good enough. So centralized foundation controls decentralized network? And what is right amount? >But at a certain point it's more profitable to attack the system than secure it, so it's a difficult balancing act. How come? When all coins are mined miners will switch to transaction fees and they will compete for transaction fees. If you want faster confirmation time you will pay higher transaction fee for your transaction meaning miners earning more, you can do this now as well. >Likewise 'doing additional useful work' is not something you can actually do in a trustless manner like with proof of work It doesn't have to be additional useful work it can be in the core design of the proof of work. In 2013 there was a coin called Primecoin which "computed chains of prime numbers (Cunningham and bi-twin chains), the results of which were published on its blockchain's public ledger, available for use by scientists, mathematicians, and anyone else."[2] "Use of a proof-of-work system to calculate chains of prime numbers was an innovation that produced useful results while also meeting the criteria for a proof-of-work system: it involved a calculation that was difficult to perform but easy to verify, and the difficulty was adjustable." It was first coin which had a proof of work with a practical use. It is still early days but this is the most recent paper I found about this matter: https://eprint.iacr.org/2017/203.pdf https://eprint.iacr.org/2017/203.pdf [1] https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=437.msg3807#msg3807 https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=437.msg3807#msg3807 [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Primecoin https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Primecoin