5 ms·

Curious: will it be more energy efficient?

latchkey 4y ago
GPU based mining of ETH will turn off, literally, in 15s (one block). But the thing is, it will just move to other coins, for now. Once those are not as profitable, things will rebalance as people shut off their GPUs. Future, ETH will grow with power requirements too... just a lot more slowly... ASICs for zero knowledge are coming, which will create a bit of an energy race. Staking will always be increasing... which will require compute and power. At the end of the day, overall, the existing power usage won't actually go away... it will just get moved to other things. Always remember that power companies are incentivized to sell their power to the highest bidder...
- zaptrem 4y ago
  Can you give more info about Zero Knowledge Proofs would require ASICS?
  - latchkey 4y ago
    https://vitalik.eth.limo/general/2022/08/04/zkevm.html https://vitalik.eth.limo/general/2022/08/04/zkevm.html "Type 1 aims to replicate Ethereum exactly, and so it has no way of mitigating these inefficiencies. At present, proofs for Ethereum blocks take many hours to produce. This can be mitigated either by clever engineering to massively parallelize the prover or in the longer term by ZK-SNARK ASICs." ... "Personally, my hope is that everything becomes Type 1 over time, through a combination of improvements in ZK-EVMs and improvements to Ethereum itself to make it more ZK-SNARK-friendly."
    - seibelj 4y ago
      That doesn’t mean we need more power. It just means the requirements of ZK proofs may need specialized equipment to process them efficiently. Different problem.
      - latchkey 4y ago
        It wasn't a comparison about the power requirements between PoW and zk proofs. In other words: Switching to PoS, removes power allocated to GPUs for ethash mining. Adding ASICs for zk creates a requirement that doesn't exist today, for using power.
        seibelj 4y ago
        I believe the zk provers will only be for L2s. The base layer will always be the way it is now. The base layer will be settlement for various shards, as it is now for Arbitrum and Optimism.
        latchkey 4y ago
        I don't understand how that comment applies to the discussion. Are you implying that L2s are somehow lower power requirements?
        seibelj 4y ago
        I’m saying there will be no requirement for ASICS in Ethereum. There may be L2s to scale Ethereum that require ASICS but that would be a voluntary decision by users who want to use said L2.
        latchkey 4y ago
        Again, that has nothing to do with the power requirements of ASICs.
        seibelj 4y ago
        I’m confused why we are arguing about. I thought you were claiming Ethereum needed ASICS to run and therefore would use more energy. Which is not the case. It’s like saying the internet needs more energy to run when a new application is developed. No, the internet is the same, it’s the application that now needs energy. So while the total energy the internet uses has increased, it did not increase the total required for the internet to exist itself.
y42 4y ago
Quote The Merge will reduce Ethereum's energy consumption by ~99.95%.
- jmathai 4y ago
  Multitudes of miners will no longer race to find the next computationally expensive hash. Proof of Stake does address the energy concerns of crypto.
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
  - littlestymaar 4y ago
    At the expense of the “permissionless” nature of crypto, moving from “anybopdy can join with his GPU” to “you must pay the insiders to join the party”. I also reveals how centralized ethereum really is in terms of who holds the power: a blockchain where the devs can screw the miners like this isn't really reassuring… Bitcoin's carefully crafted balance of power (and the disapearance of Satoshi) lead to a technological deadlock where nothing can really change, while Ethereum's totalitarian governance model allows it to iterate on the technology, but lost the freedom ideal in the process …
    - betwixthewires 4y ago
      You don't have to "pay insiders", you simply have to purchase an asset on a liquid market. You can pay me and a thousand other people, it doesn't have to be insiders. The bigger problem with PoS is that there's no ongoing cost. Buy your stake, don't fuck up and you're making money. Not true with mining, and this changes the incentive landscape quite a bit.
    - aaaaaaaaata 4y ago
      > a blockchain where the devs can screw the miners like this isn't really reassuring… It's not a screwing if they've known the roadmap the whole time....

GPU based mining of ETH will turn off, literally, in 15s (one block). But the thing is, it will just move to other coins, for now. Once those are not as profitable, things will rebalance as people shut off their GPUs. Future, ETH will grow with power requirements too... just a lot more slowly... ASICs for zero knowledge are coming, which will create a bit of an energy race. Staking will always be increasing... which will require compute and power. At the end of the day, overall, the existing power usage won't actually go away... it will just get moved to other things. Always remember that power companies are incentivized to sell their power to the highest bidder...

zaptrem 4y ago
Can you give more info about Zero Knowledge Proofs would require ASICS?
- latchkey 4y ago
  https://vitalik.eth.limo/general/2022/08/04/zkevm.html https://vitalik.eth.limo/general/2022/08/04/zkevm.html "Type 1 aims to replicate Ethereum exactly, and so it has no way of mitigating these inefficiencies. At present, proofs for Ethereum blocks take many hours to produce. This can be mitigated either by clever engineering to massively parallelize the prover or in the longer term by ZK-SNARK ASICs." ... "Personally, my hope is that everything becomes Type 1 over time, through a combination of improvements in ZK-EVMs and improvements to Ethereum itself to make it more ZK-SNARK-friendly."
  - seibelj 4y ago
    That doesn’t mean we need more power. It just means the requirements of ZK proofs may need specialized equipment to process them efficiently. Different problem.
    - latchkey 4y ago
      It wasn't a comparison about the power requirements between PoW and zk proofs. In other words: Switching to PoS, removes power allocated to GPUs for ethash mining. Adding ASICs for zk creates a requirement that doesn't exist today, for using power.
      - seibelj 4y ago
        I believe the zk provers will only be for L2s. The base layer will always be the way it is now. The base layer will be settlement for various shards, as it is now for Arbitrum and Optimism.
        latchkey 4y ago
        I don't understand how that comment applies to the discussion. Are you implying that L2s are somehow lower power requirements?
        seibelj 4y ago
        I’m saying there will be no requirement for ASICS in Ethereum. There may be L2s to scale Ethereum that require ASICS but that would be a voluntary decision by users who want to use said L2.
        latchkey 4y ago
        Again, that has nothing to do with the power requirements of ASICs.
        seibelj 4y ago
        I’m confused why we are arguing about. I thought you were claiming Ethereum needed ASICS to run and therefore would use more energy. Which is not the case. It’s like saying the internet needs more energy to run when a new application is developed. No, the internet is the same, it’s the application that now needs energy. So while the total energy the internet uses has increased, it did not increase the total required for the internet to exist itself.

y42 4y ago

Quote The Merge will reduce Ethereum's energy consumption by ~99.95%.

jmathai 4y ago
Multitudes of miners will no longer race to find the next computationally expensive hash. Proof of Stake does address the energy concerns of crypto.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- littlestymaar 4y ago
  At the expense of the “permissionless” nature of crypto, moving from “anybopdy can join with his GPU” to “you must pay the insiders to join the party”. I also reveals how centralized ethereum really is in terms of who holds the power: a blockchain where the devs can screw the miners like this isn't really reassuring… Bitcoin's carefully crafted balance of power (and the disapearance of Satoshi) lead to a technological deadlock where nothing can really change, while Ethereum's totalitarian governance model allows it to iterate on the technology, but lost the freedom ideal in the process …
  - betwixthewires 4y ago
    You don't have to "pay insiders", you simply have to purchase an asset on a liquid market. You can pay me and a thousand other people, it doesn't have to be insiders. The bigger problem with PoS is that there's no ongoing cost. Buy your stake, don't fuck up and you're making money. Not true with mining, and this changes the incentive landscape quite a bit.
  - aaaaaaaaata 4y ago
    > a blockchain where the devs can screw the miners like this isn't really reassuring… It's not a screwing if they've known the roadmap the whole time....