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I am struggling the follow the argument through the comment chain. Energy is used to secure the chain via mining; a secure network is required to be a payment s

I am struggling the follow the argument through the comment chain. Energy is used to secure the chain via mining; a secure network is required to be a payment system, but the energy usage is not from processing transactions. Originally the discussion is about people "using Bitcoin to pay for their McDonalds". Then the commenter erroneously stated, in response to that, that a "bitcoin transaction uses the energy equivalent the entire lifespan of a tree". El Salvador is using the lightning network. These transactions are done off-chain. So the transaction fees do not even go to miners. There can be thousands of McDonalds transactions that occur off-chain and are eventually settled on-chain in one transaction. Processing and validating transactions is very computationally easy. You can indeed do it on a laptop. Mining blocks is a separate issue. If you ignore the competitive security race, then the network can indeed function on a laptop. Most the mining race that is currently occurring is because people are fighting to win the block reward - this would happen even if nobody were transacting, and someone doing a lightning network transaction has truly negligible effect on that energy usage. When you said "bitcoin would become valueless, as everyone with a laptop could produce their own longest blockchain where they have half of all bitcoin" this shows you don't understand the process, because the difficulty would rise until people can no longer produce blocks so rapidly. You're describing a situation where miners are not even on the same network so it doesnt make sense

chriswilmer 5y ago
You are correct! The other person is wrong. Transaction volume has almost zero relationship with mining energy usage (there are some very subtle connections, but those nuances are hardly worth getting into for this discussion).
simiones 5y ago
This is pretty muddled up. Let's look at it like this: a block on the blockchain has a maximum size. A transaction has a minimum size. So, each block contains a maximum number of transactions. Miners must waste a certain amount of energy hashing a block to ensure the security of the network (through the incentive mechanisms described above). So, we can compute a practical energy/block, which translates to an energy/typical transaction. Now, the block size is a kind of free parameter - the blockchain guarantees wouldn't be significantly different with 1GB blocks instead of 1MB. And that, in turn, would reduce the energy cost per transaction dramatically, and allow the network to process more transactions/second. Similarly, if there were fewer people putting fewer resources into mining bitcoin, the energy cost/block could go down. This would affect the security of the network though, as it also brings down the cost of a 51% attack. But miners are opposed to such changes, which have been proposed before. So, in practice, the bitcoin network as it is today has a huge energy cost/mined transaction. Again, if you don't believe this, you should ask yourself what stops the bitcoin blockchain from processing 1 billion transactions/second instead of the current pitiful ~2 hundred transactions.
- ajkdhcb2 5y ago
  Do you know what the lightning network is? It changes all of these relationships, and it is key to what we are talking about, but you didnt mention it in this comment. Separately to the lightning network, the security (hashrate, energy usage) is still not directly linked to the number of on-chain transactions that are processed. You can compute "a practical energy/block" specifically for bitcoin but it does not translate to a meaningful energy/transaction value because the quantity of energy used is not directly caused by transactions. You can have a less-secure blockchain that does many more transactions than bitcoin with low energy usage (altcoins exist) - if these are low value transactions then people won't even be incentivised to attack it. The relationship is NOT just energy/transaction. Your estimated energy/transaction value will keep changing because that's not the relationship; the new coins in the block reward will eventually drop to zero, the value processed by the network will change, the ASIC development situation will change, etc. It's like finding a runner that eats icecream and computing icecream/kilometre. >Again, if you don't believe this, you should ask yourself what stops the bitcoin blockchain from processing 1 billion transactions/second instead of the current pitiful ~2 hundred transactions. Nothing is stopping it. Run your own lightning node and you can do more transactions than what you are erroneously claiming
  - simiones 5y ago
    What do off-chain transactions like Lightning have to do with the transaction costs of the blockchain itself? We can trade bitcoin over HN comments, that doesn't mean that the bitcoin blockchain is involved in our trade. The whole discussion is about the Bitcoin blockchain itself. Altcoins, lightning, payment apps etc are all entirely irrelevant to this point. The bitcoin blockchain as it exists today has a pretty well fixed energy cost per transaction. All sorts of things could change this - changes in the protocol to allow bigger blocks, changes in the hashrate that most miners are willing to invest, changes in mining hardware efficiency etc. But what you are claiming is like saying that it's meaningless to talk about the gas/mile of a diesel Ford Mustang, since you could always change the engine (block size), or change from gas to another fuel (better ASICs), or choose to ship the car by ferry somewhere(use Lightning instead)! > You can compute "a practical energy/block" specifically for bitcoin but it does not translate to a meaningful energy/transaction value because the quantity of energy used is not directly caused by transactions. Why does it matter that "it's not caused by " the number of transactions? As long as the block size is fixed, the number of transactions that can be processed by the existing bitcoin network is directly linked to the energy expenditure of the existing bitcoin network. Other hypothetical versions of the bitcoin network could achieve other energy/transaction thresholds. But the one we have today is extremely wasteful. > Nothing is stopping it. Run your own lightning node and you can do more transactions than what you are erroneously claiming "Why can't my car do 600km/h, it can only do 200km/h?" "Nothing is stopping it. Board a maglev train and you can do far more than 200 km/h."

chriswilmer 5y ago

You are correct! The other person is wrong. Transaction volume has almost zero relationship with mining energy usage (there are some very subtle connections, but those nuances are hardly worth getting into for this discussion).

simiones 5y ago

This is pretty muddled up. Let's look at it like this: a block on the blockchain has a maximum size. A transaction has a minimum size. So, each block contains a maximum number of transactions. Miners must waste a certain amount of energy hashing a block to ensure the security of the network (through the incentive mechanisms described above). So, we can compute a practical energy/block, which translates to an energy/typical transaction. Now, the block size is a kind of free parameter - the blockchain guarantees wouldn't be significantly different with 1GB blocks instead of 1MB. And that, in turn, would reduce the energy cost per transaction dramatically, and allow the network to process more transactions/second. Similarly, if there were fewer people putting fewer resources into mining bitcoin, the energy cost/block could go down. This would affect the security of the network though, as it also brings down the cost of a 51% attack. But miners are opposed to such changes, which have been proposed before. So, in practice, the bitcoin network as it is today has a huge energy cost/mined transaction. Again, if you don't believe this, you should ask yourself what stops the bitcoin blockchain from processing 1 billion transactions/second instead of the current pitiful ~2 hundred transactions.

ajkdhcb2 5y ago
Do you know what the lightning network is? It changes all of these relationships, and it is key to what we are talking about, but you didnt mention it in this comment. Separately to the lightning network, the security (hashrate, energy usage) is still not directly linked to the number of on-chain transactions that are processed. You can compute "a practical energy/block" specifically for bitcoin but it does not translate to a meaningful energy/transaction value because the quantity of energy used is not directly caused by transactions. You can have a less-secure blockchain that does many more transactions than bitcoin with low energy usage (altcoins exist) - if these are low value transactions then people won't even be incentivised to attack it. The relationship is NOT just energy/transaction. Your estimated energy/transaction value will keep changing because that's not the relationship; the new coins in the block reward will eventually drop to zero, the value processed by the network will change, the ASIC development situation will change, etc. It's like finding a runner that eats icecream and computing icecream/kilometre. >Again, if you don't believe this, you should ask yourself what stops the bitcoin blockchain from processing 1 billion transactions/second instead of the current pitiful ~2 hundred transactions. Nothing is stopping it. Run your own lightning node and you can do more transactions than what you are erroneously claiming
- simiones 5y ago
  What do off-chain transactions like Lightning have to do with the transaction costs of the blockchain itself? We can trade bitcoin over HN comments, that doesn't mean that the bitcoin blockchain is involved in our trade. The whole discussion is about the Bitcoin blockchain itself. Altcoins, lightning, payment apps etc are all entirely irrelevant to this point. The bitcoin blockchain as it exists today has a pretty well fixed energy cost per transaction. All sorts of things could change this - changes in the protocol to allow bigger blocks, changes in the hashrate that most miners are willing to invest, changes in mining hardware efficiency etc. But what you are claiming is like saying that it's meaningless to talk about the gas/mile of a diesel Ford Mustang, since you could always change the engine (block size), or change from gas to another fuel (better ASICs), or choose to ship the car by ferry somewhere(use Lightning instead)! > You can compute "a practical energy/block" specifically for bitcoin but it does not translate to a meaningful energy/transaction value because the quantity of energy used is not directly caused by transactions. Why does it matter that "it's not caused by " the number of transactions? As long as the block size is fixed, the number of transactions that can be processed by the existing bitcoin network is directly linked to the energy expenditure of the existing bitcoin network. Other hypothetical versions of the bitcoin network could achieve other energy/transaction thresholds. But the one we have today is extremely wasteful. > Nothing is stopping it. Run your own lightning node and you can do more transactions than what you are erroneously claiming "Why can't my car do 600km/h, it can only do 200km/h?" "Nothing is stopping it. Board a maglev train and you can do far more than 200 km/h."