6 ms·

Ethereum is moving to proof-of-stake this year. The environment argument is soon to become a non-issue.

by rafale 5y ago

shafyy 5y ago
Ethereum has been moving to proof-of-stake this year for 5 years now. Will it happen some day? Probably. But we don't know how PoS will go for ETH once it has moved. Besides, there are many other negative exernalities that the move to PoS won't get rid of.
- hunterb123 5y ago
  > Will it happen some day? It doesn't happen all at once, it's a transition. There are billions staked in ETH2 already. > But we don't know how PoS will go for ETH once it has moved. There's quite a few PoS coins that are working well, Algorand comes to mind. > Besides, there are many other negative exernalities that the move to PoS won't get rid of. Such as?
  - shafyy 5y ago
    > Such as? Enabling fraud, enabling ransomware, enabling authoritarian dictators to enrich themselves. Furthermore there's still Bitcoin that will never move to PoS, and the popularity of ETH also swaps over to Bitcoin and other cryptos. Yes, yes, there are also scams in fiat money blabla. The problem here is, that cryptos are a strictly zero-sum game and don't add any value to anybody except people who are able to dump their coins to the next greater fool. So why should we accept all these disproportionate externalities?
    - hunterb123 5y ago
      Stolen credit cards and chargebacks are a big problem. Fiat currency has a whole slew of problems. Mastercard, Visa, Stripe and PayPal don't allow at risk products like in-game currencies, porn, etc. They frequently use their powers to cut off funding for certain political targets. I don't think simply yelling "fraud" and "scams" is enough to dissuade people anymore. New talking point please. Honestly the anti-crypto sentiment here is ridiculous. I hope people know that the same people preaching against it here are gobbling up crypto as fast as they can while trying to dissuade others.
      - jakelazaroff 5y ago
        Why would anyone “gobbling up crypto as fast as they can” hurt the value of their investment by trying to dissuade others?
        hunterb123 5y ago
        Dissuading only hurts in the short run, it's good to keep the prices down if you want to long. If you think it will be more lucrative in the future it helps to extend the current prices by investing while dissuading others to invest. They'd have to get in at a later, much higher price in that scenario.
      - shafyy 5y ago
        > I hope people know that the same people preaching against it here are gobbling up crypto as fast as they can while trying to dissuade others. Only a person who extends their crypto-scam thinking to others would think this way. I can assure you that I don't hold any crypto, and that I'm pretty certain that the majority of outspoken crypto sceptics don't hold any crypto.
    - WrtCdEvrydy 5y ago
      > Enabling fraud, enabling ransomware, enabling authoritarian dictators to enrich themselves. iTunes gift cards, iTunes gift cards, oil. Can we ban those too?
      - otterley 5y ago
        Ahh, whataboutism, the gas fee equivalent of HN.
      - Tretiotrr 5y ago
        Weird strawman argument. But yes. Let's ban it.
  - 300bps 5y ago
    I don't disagree that it's a transition but hash rate has only gone up: https://ycharts.com/indicators/ethereum_network_hash_rate https://ycharts.com/indicators/ethereum_network_hash_rate
    - always2slow 5y ago
      Your own link disproves you, look at the 5 year chart.
      - jakelazaroff 5y ago
        Just checked the five year chart. It proves GP correct. The hash rate has increased by two orders of magnitude since then.
      - 300bps 5y ago
        Took me a minute to understand what you were talking about. The context of my claim was, "Since transitioning to PoS, hash rate has only gone up". You seem to think it's disproved by the fact that hashrate has gone slightly down for brief periods in the past even before the transition to PoS. Hashrate has increased from 14.86 to 1001 Th/s in the past 5 years and is at an all-time high. Since "transitioning" to PoS, it has not gone down.
        always2slow 5y ago
        So saying that "the hashrate has only gone up" implies the hashrate never goes down [between any comparison point], but you agree that over some comparison points as displayed by the five year graph the hashrate has gone down correct? Yes, the hashrate graph has a positive slope over large time series, but it does go down at various points along the time series so therefore saying "the hashrate has only gone up" is a false statement.
        300bps 5y ago
        Respectfully, you are reading English words like a robot and completely ignoring the context of the conversation. Similarly, if I were to say, "I'm so hungry I could eat a horse" it would not be helpful for you to whip up calculations thereby proving my stomach is not large enough to accommodate the volume of horse meat necessary to make this true. I have run into this in about 1 out of 50 interactions on HN over the years and I find it most helpful to point this out and mean no disrespect by it.
  - AlexandrB 5y ago
    > Such as? This video[1] covers a bunch and doesn't even mention energy usage much. Off the top of my head: rampant fraud[2] (e.g. so-called rugs in the NFT space and stolen artwork being minted as NFTs), financialization of everything, strong incentives to build intrusive DRM to enable "true" NFT ownership, creating incentives to hoard vs. invest thanks to deflationary currency, and loss of privacy (everything on a public blockchain). [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YQ_xWvX1n9g https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YQ_xWvX1n9g [2] Oh and thanks to how blockchain technologies work, fraudulent transactions are often irreversible.
delusional 5y ago
According to this Carl guy[1] POS eth will consume 2.62MW (or 22.9512GWh annualized) which is better, but still quite a lot of power for a single core raspberry pi. [1]: https://blog.ethereum.org/2021/05/18/country-power-no-more/ https://blog.ethereum.org/2021/05/18/country-power-no-more/
- Tenoke 5y ago
  I'm sure you understand how disingenious calling it 'a single core raspberry pi' is even if you dislike crypto. Please attempt building say a DEX with comparable guarantees, uptime and traffic if you believe they serve the same purpose.
  - delusional 5y ago
    I don't think I understand why it's disingenuous in the context of this conversation. Could you elaborate further for me?
    - Tenoke 5y ago
      Because it's like calling tents useless because of how much better flats are due to pipes, electricity, insuation and so on. In both cases you are focusing on some metrics while specifically ignoring the usecases where tents/Ethereum can be used in a way flats/pis cannot be.
      - delusional 5y ago
        Thanks for elaborating, but I disagree with your assertion that I'm being disingenuous. When I compared Ethereum to a Raspberry pi I was continuing the comparison from the root comment. The point of the comment was that, although POS would produce a significant reduction in power consumption, it would still consume a significant amount of power compared to the computing power of the network. Discussions about if Ethereum has extra utility that offsets that extra powerdraw is outside of this comment thread, since the restriction that consider Ethereum as a "global single core raspberry pi" are given by the root comment. I didn't mean to (and don't think i did) present that in any tricky way, and I think you're projecting an argument onto my comments that I'm not making.
pibechorro 5y ago
it was barely a valid arguement even on POW.
300bps 5y ago
Ethereum is moving to proof-of-stake this year. It was moving to PoS last year and the year before that. Now it's June, but I heard probably delayed to July. One telling thing is that ETH miners not only haven't sold their GPUs they're continuing to buy more at greater than MSRP. It's unlikely there will be a good alternate coin to mine after ETH. Some are planning to move to ETC (Ethereum Classic) but it can't absorb the hashrate of ETH and be profitable. ETC currently has 24.46 Th/s while ETH has 961.14 Th/s. ETC price has been going up dramatically in the last week ($25 to $40 per coin) but it would have to go up about 20x more to absorb that hash rate.
- RealityVoid 5y ago
  ETH miners will continue to buy but that means nothing, really, because at some point they will be wrong.
  - hackerfromthefu 5y ago
    Well it does mean that people deeply involved and informed about Ethereum, who have SKIN IN THE GAME, don't believe the public information about the change. Not surprising really, shell games with insider information being traded against the sheeple is a core aspect of the crypto industry. Who knows if this time is just like the last time and all the times before?

Ethereum is moving to proof-of-stake this year. The environment argument is soon to become a non-issue.

by rafale 5y ago

Ethereum is moving to proof-of-stake this year. The environment argument is soon to become a non-issue.

Ethereum has been moving to proof-of-stake this year for 5 years now. Will it happen some day? Probably. But we don't know how PoS will go for ETH once it has moved. Besides, there are many other negative exernalities that the move to PoS won't get rid of.

hunterb123 5y ago
> Will it happen some day? It doesn't happen all at once, it's a transition. There are billions staked in ETH2 already. > But we don't know how PoS will go for ETH once it has moved. There's quite a few PoS coins that are working well, Algorand comes to mind. > Besides, there are many other negative exernalities that the move to PoS won't get rid of. Such as?
- shafyy 5y ago
  > Such as? Enabling fraud, enabling ransomware, enabling authoritarian dictators to enrich themselves. Furthermore there's still Bitcoin that will never move to PoS, and the popularity of ETH also swaps over to Bitcoin and other cryptos. Yes, yes, there are also scams in fiat money blabla. The problem here is, that cryptos are a strictly zero-sum game and don't add any value to anybody except people who are able to dump their coins to the next greater fool. So why should we accept all these disproportionate externalities?
  - hunterb123 5y ago
    Stolen credit cards and chargebacks are a big problem. Fiat currency has a whole slew of problems. Mastercard, Visa, Stripe and PayPal don't allow at risk products like in-game currencies, porn, etc. They frequently use their powers to cut off funding for certain political targets. I don't think simply yelling "fraud" and "scams" is enough to dissuade people anymore. New talking point please. Honestly the anti-crypto sentiment here is ridiculous. I hope people know that the same people preaching against it here are gobbling up crypto as fast as they can while trying to dissuade others.
    - jakelazaroff 5y ago
      Why would anyone “gobbling up crypto as fast as they can” hurt the value of their investment by trying to dissuade others?
      - hunterb123 5y ago
        Dissuading only hurts in the short run, it's good to keep the prices down if you want to long. If you think it will be more lucrative in the future it helps to extend the current prices by investing while dissuading others to invest. They'd have to get in at a later, much higher price in that scenario.
    - shafyy 5y ago
      > I hope people know that the same people preaching against it here are gobbling up crypto as fast as they can while trying to dissuade others. Only a person who extends their crypto-scam thinking to others would think this way. I can assure you that I don't hold any crypto, and that I'm pretty certain that the majority of outspoken crypto sceptics don't hold any crypto.
  - WrtCdEvrydy 5y ago
    > Enabling fraud, enabling ransomware, enabling authoritarian dictators to enrich themselves. iTunes gift cards, iTunes gift cards, oil. Can we ban those too?
    - otterley 5y ago
      Ahh, whataboutism, the gas fee equivalent of HN.
    - Tretiotrr 5y ago
      Weird strawman argument. But yes. Let's ban it.
- 300bps 5y ago
  I don't disagree that it's a transition but hash rate has only gone up: https://ycharts.com/indicators/ethereum_network_hash_rate https://ycharts.com/indicators/ethereum_network_hash_rate
  - always2slow 5y ago
    Your own link disproves you, look at the 5 year chart.
    - jakelazaroff 5y ago
      Just checked the five year chart. It proves GP correct. The hash rate has increased by two orders of magnitude since then.
    - 300bps 5y ago
      Took me a minute to understand what you were talking about. The context of my claim was, "Since transitioning to PoS, hash rate has only gone up". You seem to think it's disproved by the fact that hashrate has gone slightly down for brief periods in the past even before the transition to PoS. Hashrate has increased from 14.86 to 1001 Th/s in the past 5 years and is at an all-time high. Since "transitioning" to PoS, it has not gone down.
      - always2slow 5y ago
        So saying that "the hashrate has only gone up" implies the hashrate never goes down [between any comparison point], but you agree that over some comparison points as displayed by the five year graph the hashrate has gone down correct? Yes, the hashrate graph has a positive slope over large time series, but it does go down at various points along the time series so therefore saying "the hashrate has only gone up" is a false statement.
        300bps 5y ago
        Respectfully, you are reading English words like a robot and completely ignoring the context of the conversation. Similarly, if I were to say, "I'm so hungry I could eat a horse" it would not be helpful for you to whip up calculations thereby proving my stomach is not large enough to accommodate the volume of horse meat necessary to make this true. I have run into this in about 1 out of 50 interactions on HN over the years and I find it most helpful to point this out and mean no disrespect by it.
- AlexandrB 5y ago
  > Such as? This video[1] covers a bunch and doesn't even mention energy usage much. Off the top of my head: rampant fraud[2] (e.g. so-called rugs in the NFT space and stolen artwork being minted as NFTs), financialization of everything, strong incentives to build intrusive DRM to enable "true" NFT ownership, creating incentives to hoard vs. invest thanks to deflationary currency, and loss of privacy (everything on a public blockchain). [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YQ_xWvX1n9g https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YQ_xWvX1n9g [2] Oh and thanks to how blockchain technologies work, fraudulent transactions are often irreversible.

delusional 5y ago

According to this Carl guy[1] POS eth will consume 2.62MW (or 22.9512GWh annualized) which is better, but still quite a lot of power for a single core raspberry pi. [1]: https://blog.ethereum.org/2021/05/18/country-power-no-more/ https://blog.ethereum.org/2021/05/18/country-power-no-more/

Tenoke 5y ago
I'm sure you understand how disingenious calling it 'a single core raspberry pi' is even if you dislike crypto. Please attempt building say a DEX with comparable guarantees, uptime and traffic if you believe they serve the same purpose.
- delusional 5y ago
  I don't think I understand why it's disingenuous in the context of this conversation. Could you elaborate further for me?
  - Tenoke 5y ago
    Because it's like calling tents useless because of how much better flats are due to pipes, electricity, insuation and so on. In both cases you are focusing on some metrics while specifically ignoring the usecases where tents/Ethereum can be used in a way flats/pis cannot be.
    - delusional 5y ago
      Thanks for elaborating, but I disagree with your assertion that I'm being disingenuous. When I compared Ethereum to a Raspberry pi I was continuing the comparison from the root comment. The point of the comment was that, although POS would produce a significant reduction in power consumption, it would still consume a significant amount of power compared to the computing power of the network. Discussions about if Ethereum has extra utility that offsets that extra powerdraw is outside of this comment thread, since the restriction that consider Ethereum as a "global single core raspberry pi" are given by the root comment. I didn't mean to (and don't think i did) present that in any tricky way, and I think you're projecting an argument onto my comments that I'm not making.

pibechorro 5y ago

it was barely a valid arguement even on POW.

300bps 5y ago

Ethereum is moving to proof-of-stake this year. It was moving to PoS last year and the year before that. Now it's June, but I heard probably delayed to July. One telling thing is that ETH miners not only haven't sold their GPUs they're continuing to buy more at greater than MSRP. It's unlikely there will be a good alternate coin to mine after ETH. Some are planning to move to ETC (Ethereum Classic) but it can't absorb the hashrate of ETH and be profitable. ETC currently has 24.46 Th/s while ETH has 961.14 Th/s. ETC price has been going up dramatically in the last week ($25 to $40 per coin) but it would have to go up about 20x more to absorb that hash rate.

RealityVoid 5y ago
ETH miners will continue to buy but that means nothing, really, because at some point they will be wrong.
- hackerfromthefu 5y ago
  Well it does mean that people deeply involved and informed about Ethereum, who have SKIN IN THE GAME, don't believe the public information about the change. Not surprising really, shell games with insider information being traded against the sheeple is a core aspect of the crypto industry. Who knows if this time is just like the last time and all the times before?