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The net hashing that goes into mining increases the security of the network and is quite different from a lottery. The energy consumed produces a real energy ba

The net hashing that goes into mining increases the security of the network and is quite different from a lottery. The energy consumed produces a real energy barrier that makes it hard to produce a different variant of the next block. It is not a waste, but a sacrifice made to make the blockchain strongly immutable.

jraph 4y ago
> It is not a waste, but a sacrifice made to make the blockchain strongly immutable That's a sacrifice for the whole world and not only for the people it benefits though. And I wish nobody made that sacrifice. I don't quite care about the blockchain being strongly immutable. However, I strongly care about global warming. > It is not a waste Well, it is a waste for anybody who does not need this blockchain. And I'm not sure it's that useful even for its current users. "Don't feed the blockchain!"
- datadata 4y ago
  Common, this argument is like saying that I don't want you to be able to have Christmas lights on your house. Doing that would be sacrificing energy that the entire world needs for a benefit that only you and your neighbors get, and that non-Christian people might idealologically not care about.
  - jraph 4y ago
    You have a point. However, I indeed don't want Christmas light on my home for somewhat related reasons.gratuitously But I suspect Christmas lights are not even close to reaching the levels of energy consumed by blockchain mining worldwide. Even Christmas lights are more useful than PoW blockchains. As human beings we are going to consume energy and produce CO2 for pleasure (we are not talking about strict necessity here). Because in the end, I believe enjoying life is almost an (the?) end-goal of life, if any. But we don't need to burn some so gratuitously neither.
    - datadata 4y ago
      I don't really think the aggregate total is important. You would at least have to then assess if that total is worth the goals of the system or not, which again brings in the subjective judging of whether the thing is important or not. I would rather just tax the externalities and let people decide how to spend inside of that. For the record though, bitcoin mining uses more than Christmas lights, but far less than clothes dryers, and far less than gold mining (and gold mining is pretty horrible for human rights and land destruction as well).
      - jraph 4y ago
        > which again brings in the subjective judging of whether the thing is important or not Completely agree. > far less than clothes dryers, and far less than gold mining (and gold mining is pretty horrible for human rights and land destruction as well). Agree too. > I would rather just tax the externalities and let people decide how to spend inside of that. Mhm, I don't believe in the effectiveness of this and I think we need something stronger than this, but that's a belief. One problem with taxing externalities is that richer people get to waste more with fewer consequences than poorer people a.k.a they have a right to pollute more / more power to pollute and I don't think we should be able to buy "pollution power". Currently, the amount of money one have is actually already roughly equivalent to one's power to pollute. Limiting the amount of CO2 each people can spend (without the ability to transfer, because that's equivalent to being able to buy pollution power", equally, might be fairer, and that would probably eliminate PoW mining because people will probably want to "spend" their limited amount of pollution in other ways. Of course, I'd even prefer that people reach the conclusion that PoW mining is heresy and decide by themselves not to do that. That's an opinion, of course.
        datadata 4y ago
        If the externality cost is high enough, consuming more carbon (from being wealthy) should not lead to unfairly contributing to global warming, if we just are able to use the tax revenue to reverse the problem, rather than merely to disincentive adding to the problem.
- adh636 4y ago
  Your argument seems to be that energy use that doesn't benefit you is wrong. I would be surprised if the idea of telling purchasers of energy what they can do with it, or computers what calculations they are allowed to make, will find much purchase in the United States.
  - jraph 4y ago
    I vouched for your comment. But... > Your argument seems to be that energy use that doesn't benefit you is wrong Not at all. It's not about me. It's about everybody on Earth. A few people are being, in my view, harmful to everybody, including themselves, for no clear benefits to themselves, and for no gain for society. While, like (increasingly) many people, I'm trying hard to not heat my home too much in winter, avoiding planes, avoiding producing waste too much, some people gratuitously burn energy because why not. Don't make me look like I'm self-centered or something.
    - tempera 4y ago
      80 % of pollution is made by a 100 companies. Bitcoin is not one of them.
    - adh636 4y ago
      > A few people are being, in my view, harmful to everybody, including themselves, for no clear benefits to themselves, and for no gain for society. This is where your argument keeps falling down for me. This may be your view, but I and many others find great benefit in Bitcoin. I dry my clothes on a clothesline, but don't feel that electric clothes dryers should be made illegal (not sure if you are arguing for this as OP does). If you are interested in reading about the ways in which Bitcoin benefits different people around the world I recommend the writing of Alex Gladstein of the Human Rights Foundation. https://alexgladstein.com/ https://alexgladstein.com/
p4bl0 4y ago
Sorry, but proof of work is not an immutability mechanism. Proof of work is only a way to randomly and incontestably select a participant when participation is open and no one is trustable, i.e., a consensus mechanism (which, once augmented with other conventions (I'm thinking of choosing the longest chain), will also prevent double spending). But what makes the blockchain immutable is the Merkle tree structure (each block containing the hash of its parent) and the distribution of the data (which is what guarantees that participants have a comparison point to detect modification). It would work the same without proof of work. A Git repository has the same exact property. If anything, proof of work makes mutability easier since it is only required to compute partial collisions to have blocks considered valid.
- mmmmpancakes 4y ago
  Confidently incorrect.
- datadata 4y ago
  You almost understand it, but are missing the actual role of proof of work. Merkle tree makes verifying the blockchain datastructure easier, and enables older blocks to be further secured by newer blocks. Proof for work however makes producing an entirely alternive blockchain expensive. When looking at the bitcoin blockchain, you can prove exactly how much energy was used to make it, and know that energy was not used for making any other variant. This means you can be confident the blockchain is not a altered forgery meant to defraud you, as this attack would require spending all of that energy again.
  - p4bl0 4y ago
    Yes, proof of work is a consensus mechanism. But modifying a block discreetly would require a full collision on its hash. Even without proof of work. This is what makes a blockchain immutable, and is not a specificity of blockchains, nor of PoW.
    - datadata 4y ago
      I'm not talking about a discreet modification of the blockchain. When you bootstrap a bitcoin client, you need to be use that the blockchain is the real one without having to trust another party, otherwise someone could give you a completely different version. By incorporating proof of work, you can prove that the copy of the blockchain you have needed X amount of energy to create. This is what I sort of agree with you that immutability is not the right technical word for this property, but that is what I was getting at.

jraph 4y ago

> It is not a waste, but a sacrifice made to make the blockchain strongly immutable That's a sacrifice for the whole world and not only for the people it benefits though. And I wish nobody made that sacrifice. I don't quite care about the blockchain being strongly immutable. However, I strongly care about global warming. > It is not a waste Well, it is a waste for anybody who does not need this blockchain. And I'm not sure it's that useful even for its current users. "Don't feed the blockchain!"

datadata 4y ago
Common, this argument is like saying that I don't want you to be able to have Christmas lights on your house. Doing that would be sacrificing energy that the entire world needs for a benefit that only you and your neighbors get, and that non-Christian people might idealologically not care about.
- jraph 4y ago
  You have a point. However, I indeed don't want Christmas light on my home for somewhat related reasons.gratuitously But I suspect Christmas lights are not even close to reaching the levels of energy consumed by blockchain mining worldwide. Even Christmas lights are more useful than PoW blockchains. As human beings we are going to consume energy and produce CO2 for pleasure (we are not talking about strict necessity here). Because in the end, I believe enjoying life is almost an (the?) end-goal of life, if any. But we don't need to burn some so gratuitously neither.
  - datadata 4y ago
    I don't really think the aggregate total is important. You would at least have to then assess if that total is worth the goals of the system or not, which again brings in the subjective judging of whether the thing is important or not. I would rather just tax the externalities and let people decide how to spend inside of that. For the record though, bitcoin mining uses more than Christmas lights, but far less than clothes dryers, and far less than gold mining (and gold mining is pretty horrible for human rights and land destruction as well).
    - jraph 4y ago
      > which again brings in the subjective judging of whether the thing is important or not Completely agree. > far less than clothes dryers, and far less than gold mining (and gold mining is pretty horrible for human rights and land destruction as well). Agree too. > I would rather just tax the externalities and let people decide how to spend inside of that. Mhm, I don't believe in the effectiveness of this and I think we need something stronger than this, but that's a belief. One problem with taxing externalities is that richer people get to waste more with fewer consequences than poorer people a.k.a they have a right to pollute more / more power to pollute and I don't think we should be able to buy "pollution power". Currently, the amount of money one have is actually already roughly equivalent to one's power to pollute. Limiting the amount of CO2 each people can spend (without the ability to transfer, because that's equivalent to being able to buy pollution power", equally, might be fairer, and that would probably eliminate PoW mining because people will probably want to "spend" their limited amount of pollution in other ways. Of course, I'd even prefer that people reach the conclusion that PoW mining is heresy and decide by themselves not to do that. That's an opinion, of course.
      - datadata 4y ago
        If the externality cost is high enough, consuming more carbon (from being wealthy) should not lead to unfairly contributing to global warming, if we just are able to use the tax revenue to reverse the problem, rather than merely to disincentive adding to the problem.
adh636 4y ago
Your argument seems to be that energy use that doesn't benefit you is wrong. I would be surprised if the idea of telling purchasers of energy what they can do with it, or computers what calculations they are allowed to make, will find much purchase in the United States.
- jraph 4y ago
  I vouched for your comment. But... > Your argument seems to be that energy use that doesn't benefit you is wrong Not at all. It's not about me. It's about everybody on Earth. A few people are being, in my view, harmful to everybody, including themselves, for no clear benefits to themselves, and for no gain for society. While, like (increasingly) many people, I'm trying hard to not heat my home too much in winter, avoiding planes, avoiding producing waste too much, some people gratuitously burn energy because why not. Don't make me look like I'm self-centered or something.
  - tempera 4y ago
    80 % of pollution is made by a 100 companies. Bitcoin is not one of them.
  - adh636 4y ago
    > A few people are being, in my view, harmful to everybody, including themselves, for no clear benefits to themselves, and for no gain for society. This is where your argument keeps falling down for me. This may be your view, but I and many others find great benefit in Bitcoin. I dry my clothes on a clothesline, but don't feel that electric clothes dryers should be made illegal (not sure if you are arguing for this as OP does). If you are interested in reading about the ways in which Bitcoin benefits different people around the world I recommend the writing of Alex Gladstein of the Human Rights Foundation. https://alexgladstein.com/ https://alexgladstein.com/

p4bl0 4y ago

Sorry, but proof of work is not an immutability mechanism. Proof of work is only a way to randomly and incontestably select a participant when participation is open and no one is trustable, i.e., a consensus mechanism (which, once augmented with other conventions (I'm thinking of choosing the longest chain), will also prevent double spending). But what makes the blockchain immutable is the Merkle tree structure (each block containing the hash of its parent) and the distribution of the data (which is what guarantees that participants have a comparison point to detect modification). It would work the same without proof of work. A Git repository has the same exact property. If anything, proof of work makes mutability easier since it is only required to compute partial collisions to have blocks considered valid.

mmmmpancakes 4y ago
Confidently incorrect.
datadata 4y ago
You almost understand it, but are missing the actual role of proof of work. Merkle tree makes verifying the blockchain datastructure easier, and enables older blocks to be further secured by newer blocks. Proof for work however makes producing an entirely alternive blockchain expensive. When looking at the bitcoin blockchain, you can prove exactly how much energy was used to make it, and know that energy was not used for making any other variant. This means you can be confident the blockchain is not a altered forgery meant to defraud you, as this attack would require spending all of that energy again.
- p4bl0 4y ago
  Yes, proof of work is a consensus mechanism. But modifying a block discreetly would require a full collision on its hash. Even without proof of work. This is what makes a blockchain immutable, and is not a specificity of blockchains, nor of PoW.
  - datadata 4y ago
    I'm not talking about a discreet modification of the blockchain. When you bootstrap a bitcoin client, you need to be use that the blockchain is the real one without having to trust another party, otherwise someone could give you a completely different version. By incorporating proof of work, you can prove that the copy of the blockchain you have needed X amount of energy to create. This is what I sort of agree with you that immutability is not the right technical word for this property, but that is what I was getting at.