This headline is misleading. Mining bitcoin consumes this power. Even if the transactions stop the power is still spent. we should however focus on making new chains less power consuming and pressure bitcoin core to switch to some algo that obsoletes asic machines.
Why haven’t they done this already? It’s clear bitcoin won’t survive in the long run, without a few fixes, and redesigning the proof-of-work function is the big one.
The entire economic model would have to be upended. The bitcoin-core devs refused to do anything about the tx fees, so there is no way this will get any traction. They think bitcoin should rely on “layer 2 solutions” like lightning to allow for more transactions without increasing the block size.
Other cryptos like etherium are tying to solve the energy problem with “proof of stake”, but that has its own problems like the fact that it creates a digital oligarchy.
Proof-of-stake sounds like a terrible idea, or else I don’t understand it properly. But anyway, even sticking with proof-of-work there are much better solutions, ie ones that consume less energy and promote decentralisation.
I remember the scandal with the block size, how the devs want to cripple bitcoin’s power to handle heavy traffic, in order to promote their side-business. But I don’t see the connection. Their conspiracy can work just as well if bitcoin is using a different work-function.
PoW is basically “proof of power”, if you have an algo that takes half the power you will just run twice as many. an “efficient” mining algo is fundamentally counter-intuitive.
Re conspiracy stuff, my point was: they’re not there to solve problems, they’re there to cash out. hoping they will solve a problem is wasted hope.
Aha! Many people assume that, but there is a way. And clever crypto people have already figured it out and designed efficient PoW schemes.
Imagine a PoW scheme where, to solve the puzzle you need to load 1GB of data into RAM, crunch some numbers based on that, send 1MB of data to a random other node on the network…
Imagine you need to load a keyboard and mouse driver, or solve a captcha with input from a human…
The trick is to choose a puzzle which is easier for home PCs than it is for mining GPUs.
On the other point, IMO solving the mining problem would help them cash out. In fact not solving it is the surest way to stop them making money out of it. Doesn’t make sense - there’s something we don’t understand.
Yeah, people have been coming up with these ideas for at least a decade, but no actually effective CAPTCHA has ever been developed. Even if we did, rich people would just have buildings full of slaves doing CAPTCHAs =\
The whole premise of PoW is that
more money investment == more mining power, this is just as true for “memory constrained” algos as it is for the current hashing one. So the only thing changing the PoW would do is piss off investors by causing them to reinvest.I’m not saying It’s impossible for us to come up with a better system, its just that I haven’t seen any compelling replacements.
yes. so instead of competing for electricity, they would start competing for memory cards. so in the end they would use less electricity.
the second benefit is to change the puzzle to take away the pros’ advantage. make the requirements to play so that it’s easy for home users but not much easier for pros.
So try this perspective, if everyone gets the same % return does any one else get richer relative to another? Furthermore chains like cardano mean everyone is staking funds that are instantly spendable. And everyone can stake by delegation without running hardware. Spending any of the interest is effectively losing money in comparison to other hodlers. You could get rid of staking by requiring people transacting to do a proof of stake using the funds they are sending to process a transaction after it. That way you get rid of the money = more money issue.
Another thing is our current financial system spends more energy anyway, Mining gold spends more energy. As others have replied to the thread below switching to a CPU only algo would reduce consumption a lot because to miners profit is the only thing that matters to these ASIC buyers. But using general purpose hardware makes it so that spending more power to make more money has an exponential hardware investment curve disincentivizing it and distributing it more evenly. Which also improves price stability.
RandomX is the solution. Proof of Space Time and Proof of Capacity show promise and proof of stake is ideal after distribution is complete.
They argue that the owners of ASICs are unlikely to attack the network because they’d quickly make the ASICs obsolete by changing the PoW algorithm and destroy their massive investment as the ASICs would be totally worthless.
However if they use an ASIC resistant PoW, an attacker would still have valuable generalized computing hardware even if they attacked the network.
So basically, if you centralize Bitcoin in the hands of a few wealthy people, it makes it more resistant to attack.
Probably true but also spits in the face of the whole core concept of the entire thing.
i had not heard that argument before. sounds like a “not a bug it’s a feature” kind of motivated reasoning.
the whole point was to be decentralised, otherwise is just like fiat currency. and anyway decentralisation would be a stronger protection against the 51% attack.
The goalposts for Bitcoin keep moving. Let me know if I missed one
Peer to peer cashOnly 21M circulation (Noobs buying on fractional reserve exchanges)Most blockchain transactionsHighest miner fee reward<--- You are hereHighest marketcap
Store of value
BTC might still be a fun pyramid investment but it’s not what people think it is
Removed by mod
