5 ms·

Proof of work systems are, at the core, a race towards ever greater energy consumption. They're an environmental disaster waiting to happen. Surprised how littl

Proof of work systems are, at the core, a race towards ever greater energy consumption. They're an environmental disaster waiting to happen. Surprised how little attention this gets. I would argue that the benefit of decentralization is not worth the price.

sbenitoj 9y ago
What would you say is the value of decentralization?
- otheotheothe 9y ago
  Freedom? On some stuff you cannot put a price tag - like mastercard ads say, some stuff is priceless.
- alexkcd 9y ago
  I'm not advocating for decentralization. Just offering that up as a common argument that PoW advocates use. I think that in reality, PoW systems become more centralized over time. You can already see that with Bitcoin. Eventually the gatekeepers become those with the largest energy resources available to them, and "we the people" will be in the noise when it comes to hashing power. I'd rather take energy efficient centralization than faux decentralization that also happens to destroy the environment.
  - sbenitoj 9y ago
    The ability to fork off from the main chain and create your own coin + the long-term economic interest of miners being aligned with the entire ecosystem acts as checks on these potential problems.
- Sir_Substance 9y ago
  Same as the value of free speech. Civil forfeiture is a great example of a chilling effect based on seizure of property. There's nothing illegal about buying a car with cash, but you might not want to because if a US cop stops you and searches your car, he gets to just keep your money, so people think "eh, maybe not, wouldn't want to be mistaken for a drug dealer". It's not healthy for a society when people start self-censoring their actions like that. If nothing else, it places banks in a privileged position where they can get away with more predatory behavior, because people are more likely to see them as a necessity. It's for this reason that anonymous transactions are valuable. You really should be able to buy legal marijuana or books about firearm construction without worrying that people might judge you. Neither is illegal, if you want one (or both) you should have the freedom to purchase them. However, many people would choose not to buy them, simply because they know the bank might see it on their balance sheet if they ever have to call the support line, and they're worried about follow-on consequences to their insurance premiums or their job if knowledge about that purchase ever circulates. That's a chilling effect in action.
weavejester 9y ago
PoW isn't the only path to decentralisation. A proof of stake system is also possible; or a hybrid approach, where PoW is used to bootstrap the currency, and PoS incrementally takes over after a certain hash-rate.
- sbenitoj 9y ago
  Maybe, hopefully they figure it out, Vitalik Buterin et al are certainly working on it -- but there is no proof yet that a Proof of Stake system can function at scale like a Proof of Work system can.
  - billylindeman 9y ago
    Bitshares and Steemit are both based on Delegated Proof Of Stake and work great. If you're interested in Decentralized Autonomous Organizations you should definitely check them out
    - sbenitoj 9y ago
      The combined market caps of Steem and Bitshares is ~$500m, that is not the same as a $30bn market cap like Ether.
      - ringaroundthetx 9y ago
        An odd thing to say because that same argument could have been used when bitcoin and Ethereum's combined market caps were ~$500m and were still orders of magnitude higher than their competitors. In fact, many experiments on those networks were NOT tried by developers because they were "soooo big and financially important" at $500m valuations. Due to this relative nature, I don't think that is valid reason to shut your mind off to discussion by trivializing other network's sizes. Cryptocurrencies gets attacked all the time. Much smaller and more insecure cryptocurrencies are double-spent where possible, because these "bug bounties" are still worth several hundred thousand dollars. Its not international news when it happens. It happens.
geewee 9y ago
It really seems like a race to the bottom. We produce specialized hardware, stick 'em in giant mining farms where they devour power - for what? Crunching arbitrary numbers. It just seems incredibly wasteful.
- twblalock 9y ago
  Bitcoin advocates ought to understand that the whole mining thing, and the increase on the rate of difficulty in mining, and the eventual limit on the number of bitcoins that can exist, are just as artificial as anything that happens with fiat currency, and controlled by a much smaller number of unaccountable people.
  - Double_a_92 9y ago
    Except that fiat money is stored on a "normal" server. Not on many computers that constantly do full power calculations, on purpose! If all the super computers on the world started mining Bitcoins, it would take them 10 minutes (or so) of calculation to mine a block. The 10 minutes are fixed, it doesn't get faster even if you get faster computers. Just the power waste gets higher.
    - sbenitoj 9y ago
      That's not strictly correct, the difficulty to mine Bitcoin has increased massively over time: https://bitcoinwisdom.com/bitcoin/difficulty https://bitcoinwisdom.com/bitcoin/difficulty Every 2016 blocks the difficulty adjusts so that ON AVERAGE a block is found every 10 minutes. If the hashing power of the network is increasing over time, the amount of time it takes to find a block goes down (can be less than 10 mins) as it approaches the next difficulty adjustment (and vice versa). But you are correct that as the hash rate increases, the total power consumption increase along with it -- at the moment there is no proven alternative.
  - sbenitoj 9y ago
    You're correct that the cap on Bitcoin is somewhat arbitrary, but the point is that there IS a cap, which is not the case with fiat currencies which can be printed indefinitely (which is why the purchasing power of all fiat currencies goes down over time). You're incorrect to state that crypto is "controlled by a much smaller number of unaccountable people" -- Bitcoin and Bitcoin Cash are decentralized networks with lots of different stakeholders (miners, developers, exchanges, wallets, users) and no single group is in control. Quite the opposite -- there has to be broad consensus among all the groups for a cryptocurrency to survive long term. Not possible to fork your own currency off of the USD or the EURO!
urza 9y ago
Common misconception. I let the great Andreas to educate you: https://youtu.be/rsLrJp6cLf4 https://youtu.be/rsLrJp6cLf4
- bdcravens 9y ago
  You're assuming people know or care who Andreas is. Many aren't glued to /r/Bitcoin. A common misconception is that the various Bitcoin heroes are well known.
  - urza 9y ago
    By the downvotes it seems you are true. But the ideas speaks for thselfs regardlea. I suppose it doesnt fit to the worldview of sillycon valley "hackers" :))
    - bdcravens 9y ago
      HN has a higher standard of dialog than Reddit. Appeals to authority without qualification and name calling doesn't really work here.
- lsd5you 9y ago
  Not convinced. He seems to be preying on willing believers like an MLM salesperson. Mixing truth with omission.
SkyMarshal 9y ago
Clean energy production is becoming increasingly viable and cost competitive. CA already produces surpluses of solar power at times [1]. A significant portion of electricity consumed by Bitcoin is already clean energy - Chinese hydropower, Icelandic geothermal power, etc. The hand-wringing over Bitcoin's energy consumption, and suggestions of sacrificing decentralization for it, I'm not sure are justified just yet. [1]:http://247wallst.com/energy-economy/2017/07/03/why-california-is-giving-away-electricity/ http://247wallst.com/energy-economy/2017/07/03/why-californi...
- MagnumOpus 9y ago
  > significant portion of electricity consumed by Bitcoin is already clean energy Electricity is very fungible, and hydro locations are limited. This means that when the (very limited) hydro energy is converted into heat to mine bits because it is easier to colocate some ASICs next to the dam than an aluminium smelter - then the smelter will run on slightly-pricier coal instead. The marginal carbon emissions can still be blamed on the coin mining.
noonespecial 9y ago
Some delightful trains of thought along these lines have an answer to the Fermi Paradox as their last stop...
mathgenius 9y ago
I'm not even convinced it _is_ decentralized. Seems like mining is clustered around a few big operations (mostly in china) that have access to cheap electricity.
- sbenitoj 9y ago
  Even if it's not perfectly decentralized, the fact that users can fork and create their own cryptocurrency acts as a fail safe. Miners with > 51% mining power would only be destroying their own long term profitability if they destroy the network.
Synaesthesia 9y ago
It’s but a tiny fraction of the environmental damage the US mulitary creates, with it’s reliance on oil.
__warlord__ 9y ago
I know this proof of work is not efficient (energy wise) but I think is worth the price to get rid of centralized entities. I hope with time we will find more efficient ways to handle the decentralization but for the moment is a good start.

sbenitoj 9y ago

What would you say is the value of decentralization?

otheotheothe 9y ago
Freedom? On some stuff you cannot put a price tag - like mastercard ads say, some stuff is priceless.
alexkcd 9y ago
I'm not advocating for decentralization. Just offering that up as a common argument that PoW advocates use. I think that in reality, PoW systems become more centralized over time. You can already see that with Bitcoin. Eventually the gatekeepers become those with the largest energy resources available to them, and "we the people" will be in the noise when it comes to hashing power. I'd rather take energy efficient centralization than faux decentralization that also happens to destroy the environment.
- sbenitoj 9y ago
  The ability to fork off from the main chain and create your own coin + the long-term economic interest of miners being aligned with the entire ecosystem acts as checks on these potential problems.
Sir_Substance 9y ago
Same as the value of free speech. Civil forfeiture is a great example of a chilling effect based on seizure of property. There's nothing illegal about buying a car with cash, but you might not want to because if a US cop stops you and searches your car, he gets to just keep your money, so people think "eh, maybe not, wouldn't want to be mistaken for a drug dealer". It's not healthy for a society when people start self-censoring their actions like that. If nothing else, it places banks in a privileged position where they can get away with more predatory behavior, because people are more likely to see them as a necessity. It's for this reason that anonymous transactions are valuable. You really should be able to buy legal marijuana or books about firearm construction without worrying that people might judge you. Neither is illegal, if you want one (or both) you should have the freedom to purchase them. However, many people would choose not to buy them, simply because they know the bank might see it on their balance sheet if they ever have to call the support line, and they're worried about follow-on consequences to their insurance premiums or their job if knowledge about that purchase ever circulates. That's a chilling effect in action.

weavejester 9y ago

PoW isn't the only path to decentralisation. A proof of stake system is also possible; or a hybrid approach, where PoW is used to bootstrap the currency, and PoS incrementally takes over after a certain hash-rate.

sbenitoj 9y ago
Maybe, hopefully they figure it out, Vitalik Buterin et al are certainly working on it -- but there is no proof yet that a Proof of Stake system can function at scale like a Proof of Work system can.
- billylindeman 9y ago
  Bitshares and Steemit are both based on Delegated Proof Of Stake and work great. If you're interested in Decentralized Autonomous Organizations you should definitely check them out
  - sbenitoj 9y ago
    The combined market caps of Steem and Bitshares is ~$500m, that is not the same as a $30bn market cap like Ether.
    - ringaroundthetx 9y ago
      An odd thing to say because that same argument could have been used when bitcoin and Ethereum's combined market caps were ~$500m and were still orders of magnitude higher than their competitors. In fact, many experiments on those networks were NOT tried by developers because they were "soooo big and financially important" at $500m valuations. Due to this relative nature, I don't think that is valid reason to shut your mind off to discussion by trivializing other network's sizes. Cryptocurrencies gets attacked all the time. Much smaller and more insecure cryptocurrencies are double-spent where possible, because these "bug bounties" are still worth several hundred thousand dollars. Its not international news when it happens. It happens.

geewee 9y ago

It really seems like a race to the bottom. We produce specialized hardware, stick 'em in giant mining farms where they devour power - for what? Crunching arbitrary numbers. It just seems incredibly wasteful.

twblalock 9y ago
Bitcoin advocates ought to understand that the whole mining thing, and the increase on the rate of difficulty in mining, and the eventual limit on the number of bitcoins that can exist, are just as artificial as anything that happens with fiat currency, and controlled by a much smaller number of unaccountable people.
- Double_a_92 9y ago
  Except that fiat money is stored on a "normal" server. Not on many computers that constantly do full power calculations, on purpose! If all the super computers on the world started mining Bitcoins, it would take them 10 minutes (or so) of calculation to mine a block. The 10 minutes are fixed, it doesn't get faster even if you get faster computers. Just the power waste gets higher.
  - sbenitoj 9y ago
    That's not strictly correct, the difficulty to mine Bitcoin has increased massively over time: https://bitcoinwisdom.com/bitcoin/difficulty https://bitcoinwisdom.com/bitcoin/difficulty Every 2016 blocks the difficulty adjusts so that ON AVERAGE a block is found every 10 minutes. If the hashing power of the network is increasing over time, the amount of time it takes to find a block goes down (can be less than 10 mins) as it approaches the next difficulty adjustment (and vice versa). But you are correct that as the hash rate increases, the total power consumption increase along with it -- at the moment there is no proven alternative.
- sbenitoj 9y ago
  You're correct that the cap on Bitcoin is somewhat arbitrary, but the point is that there IS a cap, which is not the case with fiat currencies which can be printed indefinitely (which is why the purchasing power of all fiat currencies goes down over time). You're incorrect to state that crypto is "controlled by a much smaller number of unaccountable people" -- Bitcoin and Bitcoin Cash are decentralized networks with lots of different stakeholders (miners, developers, exchanges, wallets, users) and no single group is in control. Quite the opposite -- there has to be broad consensus among all the groups for a cryptocurrency to survive long term. Not possible to fork your own currency off of the USD or the EURO!

urza 9y ago

Common misconception. I let the great Andreas to educate you: https://youtu.be/rsLrJp6cLf4 https://youtu.be/rsLrJp6cLf4

bdcravens 9y ago
You're assuming people know or care who Andreas is. Many aren't glued to /r/Bitcoin. A common misconception is that the various Bitcoin heroes are well known.
- urza 9y ago
  By the downvotes it seems you are true. But the ideas speaks for thselfs regardlea. I suppose it doesnt fit to the worldview of sillycon valley "hackers" :))
  - bdcravens 9y ago
    HN has a higher standard of dialog than Reddit. Appeals to authority without qualification and name calling doesn't really work here.
lsd5you 9y ago
Not convinced. He seems to be preying on willing believers like an MLM salesperson. Mixing truth with omission.

SkyMarshal 9y ago

Clean energy production is becoming increasingly viable and cost competitive. CA already produces surpluses of solar power at times [1]. A significant portion of electricity consumed by Bitcoin is already clean energy - Chinese hydropower, Icelandic geothermal power, etc. The hand-wringing over Bitcoin's energy consumption, and suggestions of sacrificing decentralization for it, I'm not sure are justified just yet. [1]:http://247wallst.com/energy-economy/2017/07/03/why-california-is-giving-away-electricity/ http://247wallst.com/energy-economy/2017/07/03/why-californi...

MagnumOpus 9y ago
> significant portion of electricity consumed by Bitcoin is already clean energy Electricity is very fungible, and hydro locations are limited. This means that when the (very limited) hydro energy is converted into heat to mine bits because it is easier to colocate some ASICs next to the dam than an aluminium smelter - then the smelter will run on slightly-pricier coal instead. The marginal carbon emissions can still be blamed on the coin mining.

noonespecial 9y ago

Some delightful trains of thought along these lines have an answer to the Fermi Paradox as their last stop...

mathgenius 9y ago

I'm not even convinced it _is_ decentralized. Seems like mining is clustered around a few big operations (mostly in china) that have access to cheap electricity.

sbenitoj 9y ago
Even if it's not perfectly decentralized, the fact that users can fork and create their own cryptocurrency acts as a fail safe. Miners with > 51% mining power would only be destroying their own long term profitability if they destroy the network.

Synaesthesia 9y ago

It’s but a tiny fraction of the environmental damage the US mulitary creates, with it’s reliance on oil.

__warlord__ 9y ago

I know this proof of work is not efficient (energy wise) but I think is worth the price to get rid of centralized entities. I hope with time we will find more efficient ways to handle the decentralization but for the moment is a good start.