4 ms·
> 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 c
by 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.