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Comment by legutierr | Hacker News Reader

> Blockchain technology is purposefully burdensome and computationally distributed, making it notoriously energy intensive. Estimates put the energy used to create and trade a cryptocurrency like Bitcoin on a par with the total consumption of a country like Sweden. And that’s without accounting for the environmental footprint of the physical computer hardware.

Another critic who is willing to criticize without updating their knowledge as to the current state of the technology. Blockchain is not the same as proof-of-work. Yes, Bitcoin is energy-intensive, but other consensus algorithms do not use energy at nearly the same scale.

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I think it is fair to criticize this technology on the current state, any future improvements first have to prove themselves.

Among the most popular blockchain networks right now, only Bitcoin and Ethereum and their forks (including code forks like Dogecoin and Litecoin) are still using proof-of-work. And Ethereum is moving away from it.

After Ethereum migrates to proof-of-stake, of the top 20 cryptocurrencies by market cap, only Bitcoin, Dogecoin and Tether (which is a multi-chain stablecoin) will operate on proof-of-work networks.

https://coinmarketcap.com/

Alternatives to proof-of-work are no longer "future" tech.

So I don't claim to understand any of this in detail, I only have some superficial knowledge here. How much of the NFT space works without Ethereum? My understanding is zero.

They're moving away from it is fine, but they haven't yet. I'll believe it when they actually do that. And then we'll see how that idea works in practice. And we'll see if there are any new, interesting problems with proof of stake.

Solana is a platform that is frequently used to issue NFTs, and people are releasing NFTs on other blockchains as well. There is a significant incentive to move to these other platforms, because Ethereum is so expensive to use. But yes, most NFTs are issued via Ethereum smart contracts.

Ethereum is operating a proof-of-stake network right now in production, and is scheduled to end proof-of-work later this year. My sense is that they will likely complete the transition before the close of 2022, or in 2023 at the latest.

> Blockchain is not the same as proof-of-stake.

While this is also true, I'm pretty sure this should have been proof-of-work. PoS is actually one of the less energy intensive alternatives.

Of course, yes. Corrected.

What percentage of total cumulative cryptocurrency volume is exchanged using PoW rather than PoS?

The PoW market share is and historically has been pretty massive so I don't think it's hugely disingenuous or through a complete lack of understanding that the two are conflated.

I think you probably mean proof-of-work which is the most energy intensive.

Of course. Thank you.

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