12 ms·

PoW isn't using energy just to use energy. It's using energy to validate a block of transactions in a distributed, untrusted network.

duskwuff 5y ago
No, it isn't. "Validating" a transaction takes very little energy -- in most cases, it's a simple ECDSA signature check. What's being "validated" by PoW mining is that someone has done a bunch of expensive, energy-intensive work on a block of transactions to satisfy an arbitrary condition (that a hash of the block be less than a target value). Explaining how this actually "secures the transactions" involves a great deal more hand-waving.
- randomhodler84 5y ago
  No hand waving. One needs to outspend the energy (hash rate of the network) to undo transactions, censor or reorder transactions. The (probabilistic) finality of the transactions is contingent on the energy spent. It’s not a complex idea.
  - lottin 5y ago
    Bitcoin's hashrate has dropped by 50% a number of times and no transactions have been undone, censored or reordered. This is pretty solid evidence that at least a large percentage (if not all) of the energy spent by bitcoin is wasted.
saagarjha 5y ago
I understand how proof of work works. That’s not what was being discussed here, the point was that justifying proof of work as being a catalyst for clean energy is just stupid, because proof of work has nothing to do with clean energy, it just uses a monumental amount of it and wants to greenwash itself with promises of potentially being clean to justify its continued existence. Like, it’s like people living next to a lake and drinking from it and feeling uneasy that the water might not last if they keep using it, and then you come by and start slurping up half of it, and when people complain you point at some small fraction of the water you’re using coming from desalination or something. Except you don’t care about desalination at all, or even the lake, you just want water cheaply to use massive amounts of it and when people come to you and say you are using massive amounts of water you don’t even stop using the massive amounts of water but instead point at your dinky little desalination plant, which doesn’t do anything in the grand scheme of things and people were working in doing anyways, plus news just came out pumping water on the other side of the lake is even cheaper and the enforcement on how much water you can take from it laxer and you were photographed over there taking all their water too, so yeah. Kind of sick of this argument being pushed at all, and it has nothing do with how blockchain works.
anderskaseorg 5y ago
It is using energy just to prove that you’ve used more energy than an attacker is presumed to be able to use. If our energy suddenly became 1000× cheaper and greener, then the mining difficulty would increase by 1000×, and the system would remain equally destructive. And there would be no benefit from this 1000× increase in energy usage—this would not enable more, faster, or cheaper transactions. Just hash values with more zero bits to certify that more energy was used. If that doesn’t qualify as “using energy just to use energy”, then nothing does.
- randomhodler84 5y ago
  You may be missing the point on security and energy. Think adversarially. If the energy was 1000x for me, it’s 1000x for my adversary too. It’s important that we outspend the adversary if we want secure money.
  - anderskaseorg 5y ago
    Yes I know why PoW has to work that way. I explained that in my first sentence. The fact that a PoW system requires honest participants to waste more energy than attackers could in order to function doesn’t make it any less wasteful.
  - tsimionescu 5y ago
    > It’s important that we outspend the adversary if we want secure money. Money has been secure for literally thousands of years before PoW was invented. Sure, PoW works, but it's the most wasteful solution to the problem of securing transactions that has ever been invented in the history of the world.
    - kreetx 5y ago
      Well, money isn't secure in the sense that it doesn't protect you against inflation like bitcoin does; also, the money in the bank can be taken from you while you can really own cryptocurrencies.
tsimionescu 5y ago
Sure, but that goal in itself is dubious at best. And, PoW is using the maximum possible amount of energy to achieve such a goal. It's basically like heating your home by adding CPUs in your walls and having them compute the digits of Pi instead of running current through a resistor, because you don't want to have to trust Big Resistor. The bitcoin network is far more centralized than traditional payment systems, many orders of magnitude slower, and it uses as much electrical energy as entire countries to achieve this.

duskwuff 5y ago

No, it isn't. "Validating" a transaction takes very little energy -- in most cases, it's a simple ECDSA signature check. What's being "validated" by PoW mining is that someone has done a bunch of expensive, energy-intensive work on a block of transactions to satisfy an arbitrary condition (that a hash of the block be less than a target value). Explaining how this actually "secures the transactions" involves a great deal more hand-waving.

randomhodler84 5y ago
No hand waving. One needs to outspend the energy (hash rate of the network) to undo transactions, censor or reorder transactions. The (probabilistic) finality of the transactions is contingent on the energy spent. It’s not a complex idea.
- lottin 5y ago
  Bitcoin's hashrate has dropped by 50% a number of times and no transactions have been undone, censored or reordered. This is pretty solid evidence that at least a large percentage (if not all) of the energy spent by bitcoin is wasted.

saagarjha 5y ago

I understand how proof of work works. That’s not what was being discussed here, the point was that justifying proof of work as being a catalyst for clean energy is just stupid, because proof of work has nothing to do with clean energy, it just uses a monumental amount of it and wants to greenwash itself with promises of potentially being clean to justify its continued existence. Like, it’s like people living next to a lake and drinking from it and feeling uneasy that the water might not last if they keep using it, and then you come by and start slurping up half of it, and when people complain you point at some small fraction of the water you’re using coming from desalination or something. Except you don’t care about desalination at all, or even the lake, you just want water cheaply to use massive amounts of it and when people come to you and say you are using massive amounts of water you don’t even stop using the massive amounts of water but instead point at your dinky little desalination plant, which doesn’t do anything in the grand scheme of things and people were working in doing anyways, plus news just came out pumping water on the other side of the lake is even cheaper and the enforcement on how much water you can take from it laxer and you were photographed over there taking all their water too, so yeah. Kind of sick of this argument being pushed at all, and it has nothing do with how blockchain works.

anderskaseorg 5y ago

It is using energy just to prove that you’ve used more energy than an attacker is presumed to be able to use. If our energy suddenly became 1000× cheaper and greener, then the mining difficulty would increase by 1000×, and the system would remain equally destructive. And there would be no benefit from this 1000× increase in energy usage—this would not enable more, faster, or cheaper transactions. Just hash values with more zero bits to certify that more energy was used. If that doesn’t qualify as “using energy just to use energy”, then nothing does.

randomhodler84 5y ago
You may be missing the point on security and energy. Think adversarially. If the energy was 1000x for me, it’s 1000x for my adversary too. It’s important that we outspend the adversary if we want secure money.
- anderskaseorg 5y ago
  Yes I know why PoW has to work that way. I explained that in my first sentence. The fact that a PoW system requires honest participants to waste more energy than attackers could in order to function doesn’t make it any less wasteful.
- tsimionescu 5y ago
  > It’s important that we outspend the adversary if we want secure money. Money has been secure for literally thousands of years before PoW was invented. Sure, PoW works, but it's the most wasteful solution to the problem of securing transactions that has ever been invented in the history of the world.
  - kreetx 5y ago
    Well, money isn't secure in the sense that it doesn't protect you against inflation like bitcoin does; also, the money in the bank can be taken from you while you can really own cryptocurrencies.

tsimionescu 5y ago

Sure, but that goal in itself is dubious at best. And, PoW is using the maximum possible amount of energy to achieve such a goal. It's basically like heating your home by adding CPUs in your walls and having them compute the digits of Pi instead of running current through a resistor, because you don't want to have to trust Big Resistor. The bitcoin network is far more centralized than traditional payment systems, many orders of magnitude slower, and it uses as much electrical energy as entire countries to achieve this.