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SpaceX launching an Ethereum node to the ISS
- gregwebs 5y agoIt seems they found a way to make the blockchain even more carbon intensive by burning up rocket fuel as well.
- rriepe 5y agoIt only starts out inefficient. Eventually you have enough of them to capture most of the energy of the star.
- TeMPOraL 5y agoYeah, we'll end up building a Dyson sphere just to secure a goddamn "financial network". Been worried about this for a while (see https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21280454 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21280454 and https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24309932 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24309932). EDIT: Merged pull request: quotes around "financial network" (usrusr) EDIT 2: _Microft wins this day. I'm going to start using Nakamoto scale from now on. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27368015 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27368015
- h4kor 5y agoBasically doing the same as in Accelerando https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Accelerando https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Accelerando
- usrusr 5y agoHeh, knowing humanity this is definitely the least unlikely scenario for a Dyson sphere to come into existence. Pull request: quotes around "financial network"
- piva00 5y agoI've seen your comments throughout the years and it's been one of the sparks for me to learn more about Bitcoin's power consumption, it is truly bizarre how easily shoved aside the argument about the climate impact of PoW cryptocurrencies is by their proponents. Seems that some on the Bitcoin train didn't realise that the concept and technology have been coopted by miners, etc. since the rift about increasing block size or not, the miners and others with high stakes in maintaining the status quo have won. They won't ever allow their investments to become worthless (or at least non-profitable) and now all the other smaller agents have to fight a war against that to ever have a chance to change the massive ecological impact of Bitcoin. Thanks for shaping a path to educate myself on this issue, I recognised the Dyson sphere analogy pretty quickly, haha.
- zenethian 5y agoThere's a really strong movement inside the crypto community to move away from any sort of technology that requires a Proof of Work system like Bitcoin. Bitcoin is like the racist grandfather that started the family: nobody _actually_ likes it except the people trying to get close to get rich off of it someday. There are lots of blockchains that are very promising that are excellent alternatives that are gaining major traction. Even Ethereum itself recognizes that Proof of Work is terrible and is restructuring how the blockchain itself operates to correct it. But something nobody ever even questions is: How much power does Wall Street consume? Or every bank, and every bank chain in the world? It's so easy to point the finger directly at coin mining as "that's bad" because people used to try to do it at home and it became increasingly impossible to do because of the power consumption, but nobody sees the power consumption by the huge amount of computational automation that goes into stock trading. Ethereum is facing that very scenario of miners versus environment and has told the miners: too bad, your way will die, prepare for it. I don't know if Bitcoin will do that or follow suit, but I would argue that Ethereum is the worst of the two since it still uses GPUs for mining rather than customized ASIC processors (which only have one purpose: to calculate, in hardware, a SHA256 hash using parallel micro-cores that can run hundreds simultaneously per chip) like Bitcoin does. I'm looking forward to the day when a smart, environmentally-friendly blockchain like EOS/WAX, Stellar, Solana, and the likes take over and slowly "wrap" BTC into them, burning them on one chain to activate their value on another.
- vsareto 5y agoHere I was hoping we'd spend it on virtual environments where we could just set account balances to whatever we want
- _Microft 5y agoAccording to my definition, that's a Nakamoto Type II civilization, see https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26435464 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26435464 (Spoiler: it's just the Kardashev scale with the additional condition that all available energy has to be burned on crypto mining)
- swiley 5y agohaha Etherium is the one doing away with mining though. Most people think it will replace bitcoin (for that and other reasons.)
- patates 5y ago> Most people think it (Etherium) will replace bitcoin Sorry for going full meta and I hope this doesn't come across as mean but, coin speculation is something I hope to see less on HN. There's enough of this on Twitter and everywhere else.
- donkeyd 5y ago> replace bitcoin Replace Bitcoin as a speculative asset? Because I don't really see Bitcoin as anything else. Just to clarify why, according to Coinmarketcap, trade volume for june 1st was about $35B. The transaction volume on the actual Blockchain was about $5B, according to Blockchain explorer. So yesterday, 85% of Bitcoin transactions wasn't even on the blockchain. They were trades within markets that use the same old technology that banks do. They (often) have the same KYC that banks do. And have no direct connection to the blockchain. I doubt most people who 'own crypto' actually own any crypto and they just have the right to crypto that is stored in the wallets of their markets. I realize this rant went a bit off topic, but I really wonder what 'replace bitcoin' means in this context. Edit: I realized that coinmarketcap and blockhain explorer numbers are probably cumulative, so it'd be more like 87,5% of transactions off blockchain. Doesn't really change anything about my point, just thought it was worth an edit.
- TeMPOraL 5y agoYeah, I think people forget what is it that makes cryptocurrencies popular. It's not about all the ideals about decentralization, innovation, working around dictatorships and Big Banks, etc. Few people understand any of this, and even less people care. Cryptocurrencies are popular first and foremost because they streamlined the ability to run financial scams, which otherwise are much more difficult to pull off. Secondly, because they make it easier to gamble. Thirdly, because they make it easier to exchange illegal goods and services.
- agumonkey 5y agoand ~improve~ transaction latency
- newsclues 5y agoWhat other compute is in space? Do we have a data centre in a can up there?
- ygra 5y agoThermal management would be a bit hard for that, so I'd guess no. Apart from that there's no real benefit to having that there. I would assume there is not that much computation requirement that has to happen in space that isn't cheaper and much easier to do on the ground with just sending the results to space.
- ceejayoz 5y agohttps://www.zdnet.com/article/this-is-how-nasa-chooses-tech-for-the-international-space-station-and-why-ai-could-help-get-us-to/ https://www.zdnet.com/article/this-is-how-nasa-chooses-tech-... > The station has around 100 laptops, as well as tablets and other devices, and aims to use each machine for around six years.
- lottin 5y agoIs there any advantage to running a node in the ISS?
- donkeybeer 5y agoSiphoning scarce power from the ISS to pointless mining of course.
- swiley 5y agoMost nodes don't mine.
- risyachka 5y agoTo run a node you need low spec PC so the power consumption is probably around 60W.
- 0x64 5y agoYou're confusing nodes with mining, you don't really need much more than a RasPi with a sufficiently large SSD to run a node.
- donkeybeer 5y agoEven if so, I still don't see the point of wasting the space and power, however small, on what has no use being in space.
- ceejayoz 5y agoAnd bandwidth.
- bingbong70 5y agoYou are confusing BTC and ETH... A fully validating BTC node can be run on a raspberry pi, a full ETH node requires much more equipment.
- st_goliath 5y agoa) It's a PR stunt. Adding *in space* works a lot better than "SpaceX is running an Ethereum node" alone. a.1) Particularly for the company "SpaceChain" that actually runs it, ridding piggy back PR on the name of SpaceX and the recent Tesla/Bitcoin craze. b) Every time Elon Musk appears in a sentence together with crypto currencies, prices bounce around (exactly what you want in a currency, right). This can be used deliberately to make bank and in contrast to the stock market, there is no regulatory body stopping/punishing that. c) Last time I checked, the ISS didn't have a diesel generator standing out back, so it will run on solar power only (which is of course offset by burning rocket fuel to get there in the first place, and probably by burning itself up when eventually returning home)
- nickik 5y agoThese kind of headlines are so terrible. This is like saying UPS launches new server because they delivered it. SpaceX is literally a transportation company. The title is nothing other then trying to clickbait of the popularity of SpaceX.
- rriepe 5y agoYou'll have more fun with SpaceX if you think of it as a PR company whose only product is getting people excited about space again.
- nuccy 5y agoIsn't it inevitable for any company which is successful and innovative in its field (especially if the field is space flight related)? SpaceX really achieved a lot with Falcon 9, Dragon, Crew Dragon, pushing Starship even higher [1]. If you want some context, and a comparison of already 12 years ago decommissioned SpaceX Falcon 1 with current state of the art small-lift launch rockets of other companies, check out this excellent video [2]. [1] https://arstechnica.com/science/2021/06/the-us-military-is-starting-to-get-really-interested-in-starship/ https://arstechnica.com/science/2021/06/the-us-military-is-s... [2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A5Sfw58jApo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A5Sfw58jApo (by Everyday Astronaut)
- 0x64 5y agoyikes
- sandis 5y agoWhat are the bandwidth requirements for running a node? Would it piggyback on ISS' com links?
- adflux 5y agoWonder when Elon will complete this pump & dump just like he did with bitcoin. He is either a fraudster or a moron, when he decided to embrace bitcoin and a month later decided it wasn't good for the environment... Anyone with access to the internet and a few minutes time can figure out the power consumption required to back a network which supports a miniscule amount of transactions. And that power usage will only grow as acceptance and price continues to rise.
- mlindner 5y agoThis has nothing to do with SpaceX or Elon. The Ethereum node was part of cargo contracted with NASA.
- TechBro8615 5y agoI’d like to be a fly on the wall of the SEC when the subject of Elon comes up. At this point I’m pretty sure he’s deliberately trolling them.
- donkeyd 5y agoI have the same feeling. Elon despises the SEC and he might have found a way to mess with them by playing with a mostly unregulated market. Edit: Also, his name was used a lot by crypto scammers on Twitter and nothing was ever done about those. That might also have pissed him off even more.
- TeMPOraL 5y agoI'm holding out hope that he's deliberately trying to destroy the cryptocurrency market.
- bidirectional 5y agoExcept 'messing with the SEC' is actually messing with innocent people who's protection is outside the remit of the SEC.
- ushakov 5y ago
- thecopy 5y agoAnother mechanism to increase the speculation bubble. No value is created by this, only "cool tech" messaging.
- soared 5y agoIsn’t cool tech what the people, and even HN, want? I can’t find that blog post by pg or whoever complaining that no one does anything cool anymore.
- lostmsu 5y agoIt is. And I am even fan of Ethereum. But still, wasting space and energy on ISS for what can be done literally anywhere on Earth seems unreasonable. Why did organization(s) that run ISS agreed to that? What is the motive?
- karlerss 5y agoHey, they're taking it "to the moon."
- api 5y agoYou could create a "green" block chain by launching a secure cryptographic enclave that broadcasts a randomness beacon into orbit. (Several of them really, with the same seed.) Make it something that can be picked up by cheap SDRs. Then your block mining lottery becomes whoever can guess the next beacon output, and by being in orbit everyone can hear the beacon and it becomes extraordinarily costly (and obvious) to tamper with. Of course that would allow extraterrestrials to cheat on coin mining...
- saba2008 5y agoAnd how does that stop sybil attacks? It's not different from no mining at all - whoever can flood the network faster wins (with signed blocks or output guesses)
- api 5y agoThere are cryptographic primitives that can be instantiated via a multiparty key signing ceremony when the satellites are commissioned and then the keys thrown away. After that, you'd have to grab a satellite and disassemble it in a clean room and use some kind of nanometer-scale logic probe to extract secret key information to Sybil attack anything.
- saba2008 5y agoSybil attack has nothing to do with stealing keys. It's just sending guesses into the network as fast as you can, to maximize chance of your guess ending up as winner.
- theknocker 5y agoPlease just stay away from crypto entirely, you douchebag.