Ethereum Is Green | Hacker News Reader

Ethereum Is Green

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22 pointsolouv34 comments

I think this is an unfair characterization of the ETH network, given that it has yet to transition safely to PoS. Maybe "will be" is a better qualifier.

Yes - I am prepared to be excited about this when it happens, but I am waiting. All these NFTs for example are still terrible from a CO2 output perspective, and will continue to be until PoS actually happens.

There's a difference between "is" and "will be"?

Hey, don't worry, when world+dog moves to Lightning-PoS-v4.2 it'll totally be true.

I don't know what "world+dog" refers to. I think it's actually fairly likely that they will successfully transfer to PoS fairly soon (like, maybe by the end of this year, or end of next year), but until they do, any concerns about "participating in the network can increase the amount of electricity that miners are incentivized to use, and I don't like that" are still valid, and it doesn't make sense to dismiss them on the basis of "they will switch to PoS soon." .

(Perhaps if part of one's concern was that using it would contribute to how much the network will be used in the long-term future, them attempting to move to PoS might do a fair bit to alleviate that part of the concern, but I don't think that is much of people's concern about using it, and so this is largely irrelevant.)

Given Bitcoin only contributes on the order of 0.1% of global CO2 output, I think it's mostly the long term concerns, of how much crypto could emit in the future if it became mass-adopted, that are justified, and Ethereum's PoS plan address those.

https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=world%20%2B%...

Indeed:

> early polling suggests possible support for a 2021 minimum viable merge target [for PoS]

> the merge comes after EIP-1559, itself slated for the London hardfork in July/August

> "minimum viable" means no transfers, no withdrawals, no statelessness, no major EVM change

Maybe a proof of concept by the end of the year.

I remember when they were talking about launching PoS back in 2018. At this point it’s performing better than NASA’s SLS rocket but still significantly delayed

I welcome the reduction in energy consumption, but do not understand how a Proof of Stake approach does not effectively make Etheureum extremly uninteresting for non-whales.

Less affluent users could use a staking pool, where they send some of their eth and get a certain percentage return.

Many crypto-exchanges already offer this service.

Non-whales get the same rate of return as whales and it's much easier to enter the staking market than mining.

Yes, but I think the “whales” comment was a reference to the large upfront cost of staking in ETH2. At the moment a single validator requires depositing USD equivalent of $94,399.36 (32 ETH).

Mining requires pooling and not surprisingly staking does too.

Which makes it only further centralized.

Staking pools can be decentralized or centralized. For Eth2 to have a bright decentralized future, it's important that decentralized staking pools can emerge and thrive.

The Rocket Pool protocol, for example, allows for decentralized pooling: https://medium.com/rocket-pool/rocket-pool-staking-protocol-...

You can stake via a pool, which greatly lowers the capital floor for participating.

Staking pools, e.g. https://www.rocketpool.net/

While I agree with the final point, I would have hoped for better arguments. It's not because one validator node consumes 1% of the energy consumed by an Antminer that PoS consumes 1% of what PoW consumes ... You need to weigh in the relative weight of an Antminer over the total Hash Rate of the bitcoin network, and the same for the validator node.

Avalanche's AVAX is green and has been since the beginning - you can even bridge your ETH to it, and BTC "real soon now".

I think if there wasn't so much value locked into BTC that there'd be strong interest in many of the actual proof-of-stake systems, but it instead, understandably, is in an entrenched and defensive position.

>>While it was originally planned for 2023, we're working very hard to try and make it happen by the end of the year.

I hope Ethereum doesn't rush the transition to PoS. Better that it take a bit longer, with a long period of testing, and ensure that a robust PoS protocol, that can stand the test of time, is implemented.

There have been some miners causing problems to protest the move to proof-of-stake https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26441399 which actually incentivized other miners to accelerate the move.

everyone that matters is working towards making these statements more true than yesterday

everyone that doesn’t matter is looking at the current state and complaining about it, never considering they could improve the technology because it never was about that for them, its just the latest goal post in wishing it would go away

consensus from the state-apparatus leans towards the builders and not towards the ban-ners

This is too broad.

Obviously I haven't been spending any significant amount of time attempting to improve any of the technology, because I've got obligations, and my skillsets aren't really that suited towards cryptography. (I did briefly read up on the Legendre symbol to see if I could think of anything interesting to say about their proposed use of it as a PRF, but unsurprisingly, especially seeing as I didn't take all that much time thinking about it, but would still be unsurprising even if I had, I did not think of anything even marginally interesting to say about it.) (edit : I mention this only in order to demonstrate/claim that my attitude towards the research being done is positive, and if I thought I could contribute usefully towards the efforts of getting it to proof of stake, without too big of a cost, I'd gladly do so, but because I can't, I don't. )

There's no conflict between saying "This is currently a concern. There's a potential solution being worked on which might address that concern, and that would be good. For the time being, it is still a concern."

There’s nothing wrong with pointing it out, we just both agree that your contributions don’t matter because they are nonexistent

I suppose I am responding to " never considering they could improve the technology because it never was about that for them, its just the latest goal post in wishing it would go away" which I interpreted as painting people who aren't contributing as having an adversarial attitude towards the development of the technology.

I’m only referring to the subset that are actually adversarial

Not referring to everyone that isn't or cant meaningfully contribute

Outsiders have zero obligation to improve a technology that is causing them problems.

Factories have tainted groundwater through negligent waste storage/disposal--are community members supposed to pitch in and fix their business procedures as well?

With factories thats exactly what happened. They didn’t fix any specific third party business, they improved the network of factories and what any factory could do.

There are numerous communities in the US who are dealing with toxic plumes in their groundwater, and their solution has not been to improve "the network of factories and what any factory could do," whatever that vague statement means. So no, that is far from "exactly what happened."

The typical response to pollution is to impose penalties on the offending parties. Nobody owes you their time and labor to improve a wasteful piece of technology.

The factories didn't disappear is the actual point.

People that contribute have chiseled around the edges to lessen the externalities created by the factories.

>The factories didn't disappear is the actual point.

The factories have disappeared after being shut down due to pollution violations [1][2], and communities organize to shut down factories due to pollution [3].

[1] https://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-ln-exide-plant-clo... [2]https://chicago.cbslocal.com/2019/02/15/sterigenics-shut-dow...

[3]https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2019/may/30/toxic-americ...

Not the concept of factories or the industry they were a part of, different compliant nodes popped up

This matches what is going on with crypto networks and resource hungry nodes

Again, the people who protested these noncompliant factories and had them shut down had nothing to do with the development of cleaner processes. The reason for this is because they have no desire or obligation to do so. If you invent some tech that dumps trash in my yard, it's your job to fix it, not mine, regardless of how super cool you think that tech is.

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