15 ms·

I gotta say, I’ve been really cynical about this and honestly thought Ethereum would keep putting off the move to PoS forever. I’m very very happy to be wrong.

I gotta say, I’ve been really cynical about this and honestly thought Ethereum would keep putting off the move to PoS forever. I’m very very happy to be wrong. I still don’t see the value in cryptocurrency as a project, but now that it’s not rolling back years of renewable energy development, I’m down to have some much more interesting conversations about Ethereum, and I may even be willing to buy some and try it out.

adh636 4y ago
PoW incentivizes renewable energy development. It's certainly not rolling it back. It used to also incentivize GPU production, but as of today that has been diminished as well. Instead it is only current asset holders who reap the rewards. EDIT: Edited to include at least one source on the connections between PoW and renewable energy. This just scratches the surface though. https://squareup.com/us/en/press/bcei-white-paper https://squareup.com/us/en/press/bcei-white-paper
- bhaak 4y ago
  Sure, that's why we had crappy GPU before crypto currencies. Gamers had to put off buying new GPU because they were misused for POW. Ask them about the "incentivized GPU production".
  - Ragnarork 4y ago
    If anything, it incentivized the production of GPU artificially limited for the exact work needed for PoW. Good job!
- hagbarth 4y ago
  As it was before.
- vestrigi 4y ago
  PoW incentivizes renewable energy development for useless mining, but not for anything more than that I guess. At least the renewables can now be used to power other more necessary demands, if the owners don’t move on to mine other coins that are compatible with their rigs.
- Doxin 4y ago
  > PoW incentivizes renewable energy development. PoW incentivizes energy development. And then proceeds to use it all up on PoW. It's a paperclip optimizer, except the fitness function is how much power it can waste. > It used to also incentivize GPU production And then proceeds to use it all up on PoW. It's a paperclip optimizer, except the fitness function is how much e-waste it can produce. It's for these reasons I'm not super convinced in the proof-of-storage type proposals. All it'd do is change what was being wasted. proof-of-stake seems to be the one proposal that avoids ridiculous amounts of waste. The only downside of course being that it essentially hard-codes the "1% of people make 99% of the money" principle.
  - kybernetikos 4y ago
    > The only downside of course being that it essentially hard-codes the "1% of people make 99% of the money" principle. This is only true if the only or best way to make money is through staking. This is unlikely to be the case - the ability to deposit your cash in a savings account or park it in government bonds doesn't stop people from investing in stocks. What it does instead is put a floor on acceptable rates of return from more risky options.
  - AgentME 4y ago
    >The only downside of course being that it essentially hard-codes the "1% of people make 99% of the money" principle. Anyone can stake, and the more people that stake, the smaller the reward, so the result should end up being that more people join in until the expected reward is lowered to that of other widely-available investment opportunities.
    - ForHackernews 4y ago
      They've just re-invented interest.
    - Doxin 4y ago
      It creates a system where money makes money. It's hardly surprising if that leads to the richest people making the most money. The result won't be more people joining in until the expected reward is low enough, The result will be that a few rich people will join in with enough ETH to push the reward down. There's probably be a bunch of small-time investors doing it too, but again, more ETH in is more ETH out.
- pcthrowaway 4y ago
  Stockpiling food and lighting it on fire for warmth would incentivize more food production also, but if there are ways to generate warmth without wasteful steps, I think we can all agree they're unarguably better
- squarefoot 4y ago
  POW incentivizes wasting energy for a practice that turns it into money without the in between steps of creating businesses and jobs (read: progress), and that alone is a huge minus point. That energy is then wasted for more POW currencies, which implies that those who make the most money out of it can dictate energy prices. The only way to bring back down energy prices isn't to create more, as it would quickly be allocated by highest bidders for more POW mining in an endless circle, but to reduce that toxic demand, and eliminating POW mining would represent a good start.
  - lofaszvanitt 4y ago
    People had an option against the "you must believe me it has value" money and now it goes down the drain because a bunch of idiots are crying about "excessive" energy usage. It was the perfect energy backed money (like there was a gold backed money back then...).
dudebrooo 4y ago
- desindol 4y ago
  It sounds always like a grandeur delusion doesn’t it?
  - tucnak 4y ago
roenxi 4y ago
It isn't really over yet. This must have had a fairly radical impact on the incentives of the people who are involved in running the network since random outsiders can't muscle in any more. We don't know what that does the economics of the project from just the first couple of hours. I'm going to be checking back in on Ethereum after 1 and 12 months to see what really happened here.
- lambdadmitry 4y ago
  What's more, it's still impossible to withdraw from staking. Which means there will be another massive change of incentives some time later.
bitL 4y ago
Monero is the only cryptocurrency that is fulfilling its original promise (basically digital cash, untraceable) and that is being banned left and right by exchanges these days. ETH is more of the old power balance with slightly new players without all the previous regulations (i.e. scams everywhere).
- Proven 4y ago
- darkwater 4y ago
  > (basically digital cash, untraceable) and programmatically "generable" is a recipe for disaster (i.e. most of the exploited machines nowadays run a monero miner, when they once ran a spambot)
- irae 4y ago
  It is really a canandrum IMO. Being untreceable like cash has advantages, for sure. But humans will always need to interact with each other, and some interactions rely on certain levels of trust. A small part of the reasons our society is safer, in comparison with a hundred years ago, is that wealth is held by large institutions and cannot be stolen (as oposed to storing gold and jewlery at home). Thus making personal violent crimes slightly less lucrative. Trust in banks and government arguably yeilded some benefits as a tradeoff for privacy. Monero might be too far for many people. In some ways the value not migrating from Bitcoin to Monero proves it to some extent. The institutions refusing to make the transition proves distrust in their system, also to some extent.
- joyfylbanana 4y ago
  > the only cryptocurrency that is fulfilling its original promise What was the original promise again? I don't see original Bitcoin whitepaper mentioning traceability or untraceability. There is a chapter about privacy features and no sane person would see a promise of untraceability in that chapter. It seems that shills and spin doctors pumping their own crypto coins twist the history to their needs.
  - 4y ago
galangalalgol 4y ago
Will this reduce video card prices?
- irae 4y ago
  Unlikelly. Miners are still mining other crypto. Some believe ETH is worth nothing now that it is not PoW anymore, so they are choosing other crypto to mine.
  - galangalalgol 4y ago
    I wouldn't wxpect people to atop mining. But will as many people purchase cards specifically to mine?
- Cryptonic 4y ago
  Potentially after the chip and supply chain crisis
  - nine_k 4y ago
    The switch to proof of stake is not exactly abrupt, it was,discussed and planned well in advance. I bet the video card makers must have been preparing.
- pdpi 4y ago
  They're already dropping plenty. Ars Technica reported[0] a few weeks ago that nVidia is currently struggling with a stock surplus, rather than deficit, and Amazon UK has several RTX3070 SKUs shipping at MSRP or thereabouts. 0. https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2022/08/nvidias-excess-inventory-means-the-gpu-shortage-is-officially-a-gpu-surplus/ https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2022/08/nvidias-excess-inven...

adh636 4y ago

PoW incentivizes renewable energy development. It's certainly not rolling it back. It used to also incentivize GPU production, but as of today that has been diminished as well. Instead it is only current asset holders who reap the rewards. EDIT: Edited to include at least one source on the connections between PoW and renewable energy. This just scratches the surface though. https://squareup.com/us/en/press/bcei-white-paper https://squareup.com/us/en/press/bcei-white-paper

bhaak 4y ago
Sure, that's why we had crappy GPU before crypto currencies. Gamers had to put off buying new GPU because they were misused for POW. Ask them about the "incentivized GPU production".
- Ragnarork 4y ago
  If anything, it incentivized the production of GPU artificially limited for the exact work needed for PoW. Good job!
hagbarth 4y ago
As it was before.
vestrigi 4y ago
PoW incentivizes renewable energy development for useless mining, but not for anything more than that I guess. At least the renewables can now be used to power other more necessary demands, if the owners don’t move on to mine other coins that are compatible with their rigs.
Doxin 4y ago
> PoW incentivizes renewable energy development. PoW incentivizes energy development. And then proceeds to use it all up on PoW. It's a paperclip optimizer, except the fitness function is how much power it can waste. > It used to also incentivize GPU production And then proceeds to use it all up on PoW. It's a paperclip optimizer, except the fitness function is how much e-waste it can produce. It's for these reasons I'm not super convinced in the proof-of-storage type proposals. All it'd do is change what was being wasted. proof-of-stake seems to be the one proposal that avoids ridiculous amounts of waste. The only downside of course being that it essentially hard-codes the "1% of people make 99% of the money" principle.
- kybernetikos 4y ago
  > The only downside of course being that it essentially hard-codes the "1% of people make 99% of the money" principle. This is only true if the only or best way to make money is through staking. This is unlikely to be the case - the ability to deposit your cash in a savings account or park it in government bonds doesn't stop people from investing in stocks. What it does instead is put a floor on acceptable rates of return from more risky options.
- AgentME 4y ago
  >The only downside of course being that it essentially hard-codes the "1% of people make 99% of the money" principle. Anyone can stake, and the more people that stake, the smaller the reward, so the result should end up being that more people join in until the expected reward is lowered to that of other widely-available investment opportunities.
  - ForHackernews 4y ago
    They've just re-invented interest.
  - Doxin 4y ago
    It creates a system where money makes money. It's hardly surprising if that leads to the richest people making the most money. The result won't be more people joining in until the expected reward is low enough, The result will be that a few rich people will join in with enough ETH to push the reward down. There's probably be a bunch of small-time investors doing it too, but again, more ETH in is more ETH out.
pcthrowaway 4y ago
Stockpiling food and lighting it on fire for warmth would incentivize more food production also, but if there are ways to generate warmth without wasteful steps, I think we can all agree they're unarguably better
squarefoot 4y ago
POW incentivizes wasting energy for a practice that turns it into money without the in between steps of creating businesses and jobs (read: progress), and that alone is a huge minus point. That energy is then wasted for more POW currencies, which implies that those who make the most money out of it can dictate energy prices. The only way to bring back down energy prices isn't to create more, as it would quickly be allocated by highest bidders for more POW mining in an endless circle, but to reduce that toxic demand, and eliminating POW mining would represent a good start.
- lofaszvanitt 4y ago
  People had an option against the "you must believe me it has value" money and now it goes down the drain because a bunch of idiots are crying about "excessive" energy usage. It was the perfect energy backed money (like there was a gold backed money back then...).

dudebrooo 4y ago

desindol 4y ago
It sounds always like a grandeur delusion doesn’t it?
- tucnak 4y ago

roenxi 4y ago

It isn't really over yet. This must have had a fairly radical impact on the incentives of the people who are involved in running the network since random outsiders can't muscle in any more. We don't know what that does the economics of the project from just the first couple of hours. I'm going to be checking back in on Ethereum after 1 and 12 months to see what really happened here.

lambdadmitry 4y ago
What's more, it's still impossible to withdraw from staking. Which means there will be another massive change of incentives some time later.

bitL 4y ago

Monero is the only cryptocurrency that is fulfilling its original promise (basically digital cash, untraceable) and that is being banned left and right by exchanges these days. ETH is more of the old power balance with slightly new players without all the previous regulations (i.e. scams everywhere).

Proven 4y ago
darkwater 4y ago
> (basically digital cash, untraceable) and programmatically "generable" is a recipe for disaster (i.e. most of the exploited machines nowadays run a monero miner, when they once ran a spambot)
irae 4y ago
It is really a canandrum IMO. Being untreceable like cash has advantages, for sure. But humans will always need to interact with each other, and some interactions rely on certain levels of trust. A small part of the reasons our society is safer, in comparison with a hundred years ago, is that wealth is held by large institutions and cannot be stolen (as oposed to storing gold and jewlery at home). Thus making personal violent crimes slightly less lucrative. Trust in banks and government arguably yeilded some benefits as a tradeoff for privacy. Monero might be too far for many people. In some ways the value not migrating from Bitcoin to Monero proves it to some extent. The institutions refusing to make the transition proves distrust in their system, also to some extent.
joyfylbanana 4y ago
> the only cryptocurrency that is fulfilling its original promise What was the original promise again? I don't see original Bitcoin whitepaper mentioning traceability or untraceability. There is a chapter about privacy features and no sane person would see a promise of untraceability in that chapter. It seems that shills and spin doctors pumping their own crypto coins twist the history to their needs.
- 4y ago

galangalalgol 4y ago

Will this reduce video card prices?

irae 4y ago
Unlikelly. Miners are still mining other crypto. Some believe ETH is worth nothing now that it is not PoW anymore, so they are choosing other crypto to mine.
- galangalalgol 4y ago
  I wouldn't wxpect people to atop mining. But will as many people purchase cards specifically to mine?
Cryptonic 4y ago
Potentially after the chip and supply chain crisis
- nine_k 4y ago
  The switch to proof of stake is not exactly abrupt, it was,discussed and planned well in advance. I bet the video card makers must have been preparing.
pdpi 4y ago
They're already dropping plenty. Ars Technica reported[0] a few weeks ago that nVidia is currently struggling with a stock surplus, rather than deficit, and Amazon UK has several RTX3070 SKUs shipping at MSRP or thereabouts. 0. https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2022/08/nvidias-excess-inventory-means-the-gpu-shortage-is-officially-a-gpu-surplus/ https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2022/08/nvidias-excess-inven...