3 ms·

> NANO transactions confirm instantly. > XMR transactions confirm in <2 minutes. > ETH2 with Optimistic Rollups can scale to 100,000 TPS. Do you have figures

> NANO transactions confirm instantly. > XMR transactions confirm in <2 minutes. > ETH2 with Optimistic Rollups can scale to 100,000 TPS. Do you have figures for how much compute power they need for those too? I could write an ACID-compliant DB that could do 1M TPS but if to achieve that I had to buy a gaming rig or two, run it at basically full capacity, then it all sounds less impressive. > Again, this is a technology in its infancy. But when will it stop being in its infancy? At what point do we cut our losses and say this approach isn't working (if I may add, a question every scientific experiment should reckon with)? > I do not understand the disappointment - Rome wasn’t built in a day. But we move at a faster pace than the Romans now and if a technology hasn't matured after 11 years, then that's reasonable grounds for disappointment don't you think?

xvector 5y ago
> Do you have figures for how much compute power they need for those too? NANO uses around 0.112 Wh. Barely any energy at all. At its peak, NANO might consume about as much as energy as a single shopping mall. XMR is about 60 Gwh. Such is the price of truly anonymous electronic payments, at least until more cryptographers work on XMR to figure out how we can increase efficiency. Energy consumption is an issue, but it’s overblown. There are trivial things that have a far greater climate impact than crypto, but provide less potential value to humanity. If people spent half as much time worrying about the climate impact of their own choices, our crisis would be all but solved. Finger-pointing is easy, changing yourself is hard. Still, most cryptos are rapidly moving to reducing their energy consumption by a factor of 100-1000 by moving to proof of stake. > I could write an ACID-compliant DB that could do 1M TPS Your system is neither distributed nor trustless. Users will be at your mercy. Hardly the ideal system for humanity. Try designing a similar system that works across hundreds of thousands of disparate nodes, many of which may be malicious or differently configured and in poor network environments. You will very quickly arrive at a similar model to modern cryptocurrencies. > At what point do we cut our losses and say this approach isn't working Certainly not when development speed has been rapidly increasing over time? These are early stage projects. A few years for a volunteer-designed global electronic financial system that frees humanity from the mercy of banks and financial censorship is not bad. Especially when you can’t take an Agile “move fast and break things” approach. > But we move at a faster pace than the Romans now and if a technology hasn't matured after 11 years Why do you keep saying the technology hasn’t matured after 11 years? I feel like you barely read my reply - how are NANO, XMR, and ETH/ETH2 not massive indicators of the improvement in the crypto sphere? Each alone represents a significant generational stride beyond BTC as it was originally defined. NANO brought us fast transactions, XMR brought us anonymity and censorship resistance, and ETH brought us smart contracts.
- skytreader 5y ago
  > At its peak, NANO might consume about as much as energy as a single shopping mall. That's not a comforting analogy. A shopping mall processes payments that confirm almost instantly too, even on exchange, on top of running lights, security, maybe a movie theater, some music over PA, running escalators, cooking food, etc. And that's just energy consumption. NANO also has hardware costs that scale linearly with the size of a network. > XMR is about 60 Gwh...at least until more cryptographers work on XMR to figure out how we can increase efficiency. Educate me if there's an approach I'm missing here but computing experience so far suggests that there will be little improvement in these figures for a damn long time. As it seems to me, P will have to equal NP before significant strides are made in this domain, at which point of course we've opened a Pandora's box that renders most crypto (not just -currency) insecure. > There are trivial things that consume far more energy than crypto Of secondary importance to me but I'm really curious what you think these things are. > Why do you keep saying the technology hasn’t matured after 11 years? For the record, you are the first person in our exchange to suggest that this tech is still in its infancy. To quote your previous reply: > Again, this is a technology in its infancy. [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27262914 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27262914] Actually, in your very post that I am replying to, you say that, > These are early stage projects. My point is, they may be massive improvements, generational strides from BTC, but if after 11 years there are still roadblocks to wider rollout (like, as you concede, efficiency), it's just rational to second-guess the approach. (Footnote: I feel like the purpose of my ACID DB analogy flew over your head. The whole point of it is not to impress but rather to show why raw throughput without specifying the hardware offers little insight. But that's a moot point here.)
  - xvector 5y ago
    > That's not a comforting analogy. A decentralized world financial system with the transaction capacity double that of VISA consuming as much energy as a shopping mall during peak load is perfectly fine. Our current financial system consumes more. It is literally a negligible cost. > there will be little improvement in these figures for a damn long time Some preliminary explorations have shown that it may be possible to adopt anonymity on a Nano-like protocol. Regardless, it won’t be fixed for a long time but that doesn’t matter. I would support Tor if it used 60 Gwh, and so the same go for XMR. Both are essential in guarding people from censorship and authoritarianism. > Of secondary importance to me but I'm really curious what you think these things are. In terms of raw environmental impact? The factory farm industry. But, that’s another discussion entirely. > if after 11 years there are still roadblocks to wider rollout, it's just rational to second-guess the approach. Designing a decentralized exchange of currency is a hard problem to solve. 11 years doesn’t seem concerning to me with the improvements we have seen in the time span. Especially given that these projects are mostly developed by volunteers. There are improvements to be made, mainly around usability. But, those can come later, when the networks and protocols have matured.

xvector 5y ago

> Do you have figures for how much compute power they need for those too? NANO uses around 0.112 Wh. Barely any energy at all. At its peak, NANO might consume about as much as energy as a single shopping mall. XMR is about 60 Gwh. Such is the price of truly anonymous electronic payments, at least until more cryptographers work on XMR to figure out how we can increase efficiency. Energy consumption is an issue, but it’s overblown. There are trivial things that have a far greater climate impact than crypto, but provide less potential value to humanity. If people spent half as much time worrying about the climate impact of their own choices, our crisis would be all but solved. Finger-pointing is easy, changing yourself is hard. Still, most cryptos are rapidly moving to reducing their energy consumption by a factor of 100-1000 by moving to proof of stake. > I could write an ACID-compliant DB that could do 1M TPS Your system is neither distributed nor trustless. Users will be at your mercy. Hardly the ideal system for humanity. Try designing a similar system that works across hundreds of thousands of disparate nodes, many of which may be malicious or differently configured and in poor network environments. You will very quickly arrive at a similar model to modern cryptocurrencies. > At what point do we cut our losses and say this approach isn't working Certainly not when development speed has been rapidly increasing over time? These are early stage projects. A few years for a volunteer-designed global electronic financial system that frees humanity from the mercy of banks and financial censorship is not bad. Especially when you can’t take an Agile “move fast and break things” approach. > But we move at a faster pace than the Romans now and if a technology hasn't matured after 11 years Why do you keep saying the technology hasn’t matured after 11 years? I feel like you barely read my reply - how are NANO, XMR, and ETH/ETH2 not massive indicators of the improvement in the crypto sphere? Each alone represents a significant generational stride beyond BTC as it was originally defined. NANO brought us fast transactions, XMR brought us anonymity and censorship resistance, and ETH brought us smart contracts.

skytreader 5y ago
> At its peak, NANO might consume about as much as energy as a single shopping mall. That's not a comforting analogy. A shopping mall processes payments that confirm almost instantly too, even on exchange, on top of running lights, security, maybe a movie theater, some music over PA, running escalators, cooking food, etc. And that's just energy consumption. NANO also has hardware costs that scale linearly with the size of a network. > XMR is about 60 Gwh...at least until more cryptographers work on XMR to figure out how we can increase efficiency. Educate me if there's an approach I'm missing here but computing experience so far suggests that there will be little improvement in these figures for a damn long time. As it seems to me, P will have to equal NP before significant strides are made in this domain, at which point of course we've opened a Pandora's box that renders most crypto (not just -currency) insecure. > There are trivial things that consume far more energy than crypto Of secondary importance to me but I'm really curious what you think these things are. > Why do you keep saying the technology hasn’t matured after 11 years? For the record, you are the first person in our exchange to suggest that this tech is still in its infancy. To quote your previous reply: > Again, this is a technology in its infancy. [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27262914 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27262914] Actually, in your very post that I am replying to, you say that, > These are early stage projects. My point is, they may be massive improvements, generational strides from BTC, but if after 11 years there are still roadblocks to wider rollout (like, as you concede, efficiency), it's just rational to second-guess the approach. (Footnote: I feel like the purpose of my ACID DB analogy flew over your head. The whole point of it is not to impress but rather to show why raw throughput without specifying the hardware offers little insight. But that's a moot point here.)
- xvector 5y ago
  > That's not a comforting analogy. A decentralized world financial system with the transaction capacity double that of VISA consuming as much energy as a shopping mall during peak load is perfectly fine. Our current financial system consumes more. It is literally a negligible cost. > there will be little improvement in these figures for a damn long time Some preliminary explorations have shown that it may be possible to adopt anonymity on a Nano-like protocol. Regardless, it won’t be fixed for a long time but that doesn’t matter. I would support Tor if it used 60 Gwh, and so the same go for XMR. Both are essential in guarding people from censorship and authoritarianism. > Of secondary importance to me but I'm really curious what you think these things are. In terms of raw environmental impact? The factory farm industry. But, that’s another discussion entirely. > if after 11 years there are still roadblocks to wider rollout, it's just rational to second-guess the approach. Designing a decentralized exchange of currency is a hard problem to solve. 11 years doesn’t seem concerning to me with the improvements we have seen in the time span. Especially given that these projects are mostly developed by volunteers. There are improvements to be made, mainly around usability. But, those can come later, when the networks and protocols have matured.