4 ms·

Ethereum Merge: How one big cryptocurrency is going green

37 points by DocFeind 4y ago

aaroninsf 4y ago
Now, if only there were a pressing use case beyond grift and crime.... How much did this product placement cost, or is post-Brexit BBC the equivalent of Forbes.com?
- hmrtn 4y ago
  Care to back up that claim?
- throwawayKiwi9 4y ago
  Ever tried selling online? Let me know when your PayPal account gets frozen and you have zero recourse. And enjoy your chargebacks.
janef0421 4y ago
Reducing power usage is a positive, but it isn't green until the system is actually useful for facilitating commerce at scale. Ethereum hasn't shown that capability, even as an auxiliary currency in international trade, and I am skeptical its fundamental architecture is capable of doing so.
joebamabidack 4y ago
I guess running the eth blockchain on amazon servers is greener and decentralized))
- jbirer 4y ago
  Actually, given that CPU / GPU hash power is not important anymore, it's much eco-friendly to run nodes on Amazon Firecracker VMs than hundreds of machines.
ChadNauseam 4y ago
I’m very hopeful that they merge will go well (projected to happen in about 2 hours as of this comment). but anything can happen. This is probably one of the most high-stakes moments in open source history I think. One interesting fact about ethereum’s new consensus protocol: what happens during a hypothetical WWIII, when half the world becomes completely unable to communicate with the other half? Well, ethereum favors liveness over consistency, so both halves of the world will continue producing blocks. And they have a mechanism called “finalization”, where once 2/3rds of the stake has signed a block it cannot be reverted (your client will refuse to ever revert it). But if the partition results in a 50/50 split, the chain won’t finalize. But each half of the world will see the validators not producing blocks, and penalize them by deleting some of their stake. After a time, each half will think the other half has been penalized enough that their half now has 2/3rds of the stake. At that point both halves will begin finalizing blocks again, thus permanently splitting the network into two separate chains.

37 points by DocFeind 4y ago

Now, if only there were a pressing use case beyond grift and crime.... How much did this product placement cost, or is post-Brexit BBC the equivalent of Forbes.com?

hmrtn 4y ago
Care to back up that claim?
throwawayKiwi9 4y ago
Ever tried selling online? Let me know when your PayPal account gets frozen and you have zero recourse. And enjoy your chargebacks.

janef0421 4y ago

Reducing power usage is a positive, but it isn't green until the system is actually useful for facilitating commerce at scale. Ethereum hasn't shown that capability, even as an auxiliary currency in international trade, and I am skeptical its fundamental architecture is capable of doing so.

joebamabidack 4y ago

I guess running the eth blockchain on amazon servers is greener and decentralized))

jbirer 4y ago
Actually, given that CPU / GPU hash power is not important anymore, it's much eco-friendly to run nodes on Amazon Firecracker VMs than hundreds of machines.

ChadNauseam 4y ago

I’m very hopeful that they merge will go well (projected to happen in about 2 hours as of this comment). but anything can happen. This is probably one of the most high-stakes moments in open source history I think. One interesting fact about ethereum’s new consensus protocol: what happens during a hypothetical WWIII, when half the world becomes completely unable to communicate with the other half? Well, ethereum favors liveness over consistency, so both halves of the world will continue producing blocks. And they have a mechanism called “finalization”, where once 2/3rds of the stake has signed a block it cannot be reverted (your client will refuse to ever revert it). But if the partition results in a 50/50 split, the chain won’t finalize. But each half of the world will see the validators not producing blocks, and penalize them by deleting some of their stake. After a time, each half will think the other half has been penalized enough that their half now has 2/3rds of the stake. At that point both halves will begin finalizing blocks again, thus permanently splitting the network into two separate chains.