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Everything expends energy in order to solve some problem or accomplish some goal. Whether the problem is worth solving or the goal worth pursuing given the requ

Everything expends energy in order to solve some problem or accomplish some goal. Whether the problem is worth solving or the goal worth pursuing given the required energy is subjective, but beside the point. If it can solve more problems then the expending of energy becomes more justified.

xg15 5y ago
> Whether the problem is worth solving or the goal worth pursuing given the required energy is subjective, but beside the point. No, it's very much not besides the point - and I'd argue it's one of the core issues with PoW and the reason why people are so appalled by it. Yes, everything expends energy, but the special property of PoW is that the energy cost is intentional. Therefore it's fundamentally impossible to reduce the energy cost as that would defeat the whole point: If someone manages to find a more efficient way to mine, this is a threat to the network and has to be counteracted by raising the difficulty. Conversely, the amount of energy that can be expended for mining a single block is potentially unbounded, in contrast to other problems ehere the energy actually perform useful work. This leaves belief whether or not the problem is worth pursuing as the only measure about the energy cost of PoW. And this belief is influenced by all kinds of factors from technical to financial to psychological. But it is generally not influenced by the amount of energy already spent.
- mgraczyk 5y ago
  This is factually incorrect. I'm not a fan at all of proof of work schemes, but it's important to criticize them correctly. Energy consumption is not fundamental in any way. Proof of work depends only in the consumption of some resource that has economic value. It doesn't have to require any energy at all. For example, Chia had a proof of work mechanism that uses disk storage instead of computation. It uses comparably very little energy and the difficulty is not substantially sensitive to energy efficiency because the cost is dominated by space rather than computation. There are other examples that attempt to use things like spatially distributed network bandwidth as a resource. I'm not a fan of most of these, but the point is that energy is not fundamental.
  - lisper 5y ago
    > Chia had a proof of work mechanism that uses disk storage instead of computation And how do you think those disks get made? (And how do you run those disks without expending energy?)
    - mgraczyk 5y ago
      They do use energy, but it's very small compared to other economic activity. For example, suppose Bitcoin consumed as much energy as a few households. Would that be acceptable? Alternatives aren't quite that efficient, but my point is that the relative energy consumption matters a lot.
      - xg15 5y ago
        > For example, suppose Bitcoin consumed as much energy as a few households. Would that be acceptable? But in this scenario, Bitcoin would consume rising amounts of some other resource, say SSDs or network capacity.
      - lisper 5y ago
        > suppose Bitcoin consumed as much energy as a few households That's not possible. The marginal cost of mining has to equal the value of the coins mined.
        mgraczyk 5y ago
        The cost can come from things that do not consume energy, for example fabricating a complex chip that includes rare materials.
        slavik81 5y ago
        So, proof-of-gold?
        lisper 5y ago
        And where do you think those rare materials come from?
kaba0 5y ago
But if something has a fundamentally monotonically increasing cost in terms of energy, when will we reach the point where it no longer worth the tradeoff? Is taking more energy than Argentina really worthwhile for the few that uses cryptos?
Aerroon 5y ago
To add to this: we can also harvest energy from processes that would happen anyway. Eg solar power and hydro power. The water is going to flow downhill whether there is an electric generator in the way or not. Same for solar panels - whether we capture it and convert it to electrical energy or not makes little difference for the Earth as a whole. We just get a whole bunch of energy "for free" because we're inserting ourselves into a natural process that's ongoing (we do need the apparatus to capture it though). Nuclear and fossil fuels are similar, but the timescales involved there are far too long for humans. Ie burning coal does have negative side effects because we aren't creating new coal from the carbon in the atmosphere at comparable rates.

xg15 5y ago

> Whether the problem is worth solving or the goal worth pursuing given the required energy is subjective, but beside the point. No, it's very much not besides the point - and I'd argue it's one of the core issues with PoW and the reason why people are so appalled by it. Yes, everything expends energy, but the special property of PoW is that the energy cost is intentional. Therefore it's fundamentally impossible to reduce the energy cost as that would defeat the whole point: If someone manages to find a more efficient way to mine, this is a threat to the network and has to be counteracted by raising the difficulty. Conversely, the amount of energy that can be expended for mining a single block is potentially unbounded, in contrast to other problems ehere the energy actually perform useful work. This leaves belief whether or not the problem is worth pursuing as the only measure about the energy cost of PoW. And this belief is influenced by all kinds of factors from technical to financial to psychological. But it is generally not influenced by the amount of energy already spent.

mgraczyk 5y ago
This is factually incorrect. I'm not a fan at all of proof of work schemes, but it's important to criticize them correctly. Energy consumption is not fundamental in any way. Proof of work depends only in the consumption of some resource that has economic value. It doesn't have to require any energy at all. For example, Chia had a proof of work mechanism that uses disk storage instead of computation. It uses comparably very little energy and the difficulty is not substantially sensitive to energy efficiency because the cost is dominated by space rather than computation. There are other examples that attempt to use things like spatially distributed network bandwidth as a resource. I'm not a fan of most of these, but the point is that energy is not fundamental.
- lisper 5y ago
  > Chia had a proof of work mechanism that uses disk storage instead of computation And how do you think those disks get made? (And how do you run those disks without expending energy?)
  - mgraczyk 5y ago
    They do use energy, but it's very small compared to other economic activity. For example, suppose Bitcoin consumed as much energy as a few households. Would that be acceptable? Alternatives aren't quite that efficient, but my point is that the relative energy consumption matters a lot.
    - xg15 5y ago
      > For example, suppose Bitcoin consumed as much energy as a few households. Would that be acceptable? But in this scenario, Bitcoin would consume rising amounts of some other resource, say SSDs or network capacity.
    - lisper 5y ago
      > suppose Bitcoin consumed as much energy as a few households That's not possible. The marginal cost of mining has to equal the value of the coins mined.
      - mgraczyk 5y ago
        The cost can come from things that do not consume energy, for example fabricating a complex chip that includes rare materials.
        slavik81 5y ago
        So, proof-of-gold?
        lisper 5y ago
        And where do you think those rare materials come from?

kaba0 5y ago

But if something has a fundamentally monotonically increasing cost in terms of energy, when will we reach the point where it no longer worth the tradeoff? Is taking more energy than Argentina really worthwhile for the few that uses cryptos?

Aerroon 5y ago

To add to this: we can also harvest energy from processes that would happen anyway. Eg solar power and hydro power. The water is going to flow downhill whether there is an electric generator in the way or not. Same for solar panels - whether we capture it and convert it to electrical energy or not makes little difference for the Earth as a whole. We just get a whole bunch of energy "for free" because we're inserting ourselves into a natural process that's ongoing (we do need the apparatus to capture it though). Nuclear and fossil fuels are similar, but the timescales involved there are far too long for humans. Ie burning coal does have negative side effects because we aren't creating new coal from the carbon in the atmosphere at comparable rates.