Let's not forget that PoW serves another equally important purpose besides consensus:
PoW is required for fair distribution of coins.
Note that I'm not saying that PoW suffices for fair distribution of coins.
You can still get wealth concentration from premines, instamines, fastmines, mining tax, and so on.
But without PoW you definitely get wealth concentration... weakening decentralization.
Topic: bitcoin can be made efficient and less energy consuming? - page 2. (Read 501 times)
What people do not like is that bitcoin energy consumption is „pointless“ by design. I have not seen any preposition on how to resolve this issue and put in a new protocol that is more secure however. Still IF there is a option that offers the same security with no energy consumption, I’m shure it would be a huge success.
But then the world would lose all the unique benefits to society that we get thanks to Bitcoin using energy. Bitcoin can allow society to stop wasting a lot of electricity and make renewable resources cheaper. Moving away from PoW would take away those benefits. Even if there was another option that was just as secure and decentralized as PoW, it would hurt society to move away from it. PoW provides tremendous benefits to society, as I explained in my post above. The idea that Bitcoin using energy is bad is a misconception. The fact that Bitcoin uses energy is very beneficial to society even if we aren't even talking about its use as Bitcoin's security mechanism. Anyone who says PoW is pointless or bad for the environment doesn't have an understanding of how it works.
What people do not like is that bitcoin energy consumption is „pointless“ by design. I have not seen any preposition on how to resolve this issue and put in a new protocol that is more secure however. Still IF there is a option that offers the same security with no energy consumption, I’m shure it would be a huge success.
Rather than seeing the energy consumption as a problem, we should see it as a solution. The energy consumption of Bitcoin is its security. If you do away with energy or reduce it, you change the security model.
You can secure the order of transactions with a virtual or physical resource.
Bitcoin chooses the latter and secures the chain as long as the majority of computations are directed at the honest chain. We know computations require energy to execute and because we're doing so many computations (300 exa/s), this consumes a ton of energy (physical resource) that secures our chain.
Here comes the interesting part. If you want to secure yourself from really high energy attacks (e.g. state-level energy attacks), you have no choice but to combat them with higher energy. Thus, Bitcoin consuming energy levels of countries is really the only way to keep it *really* secure from large scale attacks.
You could argue that instead of energy, we can use other resources from the physical world like space and time. Some consensus attempts try to use these, but my intuition is that it can't possibly have the same level of "hardness" or "cost" to it because space doesn't really "move" around and hence there's no work to it. Admittedly, this is very layman view and I never really looked at how exactly they try to achieve this.
Chains like Ethereum secure the order with a virtual resource called a coin. This resource is completely disconnected from the physical world. Some would argue they are connected because we can have physical consequences (e.g. prison time in case of a theft), but this is just our interpretation of it. The resource itself is inherently disconnected from the physical world because it's defined inside this made up system itself. As a consequence, it comes with no real physical cost and no physical constraints. The reason why you may want to have physical constraints is because the world we live in is a system we don't know how to exploit, at least not yet. This means leaders/countries don't have magic knobs to bend the rules and gain an advantage. Physical world is objectively fair, it encodes no assigned ranks or leader positions.
You can secure the order of transactions with a virtual or physical resource.
Bitcoin chooses the latter and secures the chain as long as the majority of computations are directed at the honest chain. We know computations require energy to execute and because we're doing so many computations (300 exa/s), this consumes a ton of energy (physical resource) that secures our chain.
Here comes the interesting part. If you want to secure yourself from really high energy attacks (e.g. state-level energy attacks), you have no choice but to combat them with higher energy. Thus, Bitcoin consuming energy levels of countries is really the only way to keep it *really* secure from large scale attacks.
You could argue that instead of energy, we can use other resources from the physical world like space and time. Some consensus attempts try to use these, but my intuition is that it can't possibly have the same level of "hardness" or "cost" to it because space doesn't really "move" around and hence there's no work to it. Admittedly, this is very layman view and I never really looked at how exactly they try to achieve this.
Chains like Ethereum secure the order with a virtual resource called a coin. This resource is completely disconnected from the physical world. Some would argue they are connected because we can have physical consequences (e.g. prison time in case of a theft), but this is just our interpretation of it. The resource itself is inherently disconnected from the physical world because it's defined inside this made up system itself. As a consequence, it comes with no real physical cost and no physical constraints. The reason why you may want to have physical constraints is because the world we live in is a system we don't know how to exploit, at least not yet. This means leaders/countries don't have magic knobs to bend the rules and gain an advantage. Physical world is objectively fair, it encodes no assigned ranks or leader positions.
Energy consumption of Bitcoin is not a problem. In fact its a very good thing! It creates an energy economy for wasted energy that will allow the world to stop wasting tons of energy. Energy production wastes tons of energy to keep the lights on at all times by overproducing. Bitcoin is gonna soak up all that wasted energy and put it to good economic value by 'storing' it in monetary form - satoshis. This is a huge win for the world.
Plus it will greatly help renewable energy production become more economically viable than fossil fuels. Another win for the world!
The world with Bitcoin wastes far less energy and energy production as a whole becomes more profitable meaning fewer places in the world energy problems, and we also transition to renewables more quickly thus saving human civilization from worse effects of climate change.
The world without Bitcoin continues wasting enormous amounts of energy, energy production stays as profitable as it has been, and we transition to renewables more slowly.
The negatives of energy use in bitcoin mining are purely optics: it just LOOKS bad. But it is in fact a VERY GOOD thing for the world. We don't need to do anything to lower the energy consumption of Bitcoin, in fact it would be a bad thing if we did that! All we need to do is get the public educated on the benefits of Bitcoin mining and understanding why what they've been led to believe about PoW is dead wrong. There is no energy problem with Bitcoin, there's just an education and misinformation problem.
The idea that Bitcoin should use less energy is simply a misunderstanding of the effects that Bitcoin mining has on the world. It is a failure to see the benefits while falsely identifying negatives. Unfortunately it is that falsely identified negative that is the most obviously stated thing that pops up when doing a surface-level analysis of PoW mining. It's one of those things in life where the obvious conclusion is dead wrong and you can only get to the correct conclusion by having a good understanding of the systems at play.
Plus it will greatly help renewable energy production become more economically viable than fossil fuels. Another win for the world!
The world with Bitcoin wastes far less energy and energy production as a whole becomes more profitable meaning fewer places in the world energy problems, and we also transition to renewables more quickly thus saving human civilization from worse effects of climate change.
The world without Bitcoin continues wasting enormous amounts of energy, energy production stays as profitable as it has been, and we transition to renewables more slowly.
The negatives of energy use in bitcoin mining are purely optics: it just LOOKS bad. But it is in fact a VERY GOOD thing for the world. We don't need to do anything to lower the energy consumption of Bitcoin, in fact it would be a bad thing if we did that! All we need to do is get the public educated on the benefits of Bitcoin mining and understanding why what they've been led to believe about PoW is dead wrong. There is no energy problem with Bitcoin, there's just an education and misinformation problem.
The idea that Bitcoin should use less energy is simply a misunderstanding of the effects that Bitcoin mining has on the world. It is a failure to see the benefits while falsely identifying negatives. Unfortunately it is that falsely identified negative that is the most obviously stated thing that pops up when doing a surface-level analysis of PoW mining. It's one of those things in life where the obvious conclusion is dead wrong and you can only get to the correct conclusion by having a good understanding of the systems at play.
how can Bitcoin be made more efficient and secure without using too much electricity ?,
the current way of confirming transactions, called "proof of work" , uses a lot of energy, so may many people are looking for other ways to do it. is there are some other ways we could do it ? ,
the current way of confirming transactions, called "proof of work" , uses a lot of energy, so may many people are looking for other ways to do it. is there are some other ways we could do it ? ,
Too much/lot of energy are just empty words if you don't have some objective data to show. When you read various articles that claim that Bitcoin consumes too much energy, do they say that this share is 0.5%. maybe 1% or 5% of the total electricity consumption? According to some data, energy losses at the world level in one year are about 50 000 TWh, and someone correct me if I'm wrong, Bitcoin does not consume more than 300 TWh per year at the moment.
It may seem like a lot, but in fact it is not, and I will ask the question : "Would the world be a nicer and greener place if those 300 TWh were consumed by banks, Christmas and New Year lights, or if they were simply lost in the grid?"
bitcoin energy consumption :
world energy consumption :
i am comparing with transport x bitcoin ,
transport have around 420TWH and bitcoin have around : 97TWH
does it seems high or low ?
i don't know the websites are right or not
source : https://digiconomist.net/bitcoin-energy-consumption#:~:text=The%20article%20highlights%20that%20the,gCO2%2FkWh%20in%20August%202021.
: https://www.iea.org/reports/electricity-information-overview/electricity-consumption
the current way of confirming transactions, called "proof of work" , uses a lot of energy, so may many people are looking for other ways to do it.
I doubt those are the reasons.
People are finding alternatives to create a centralized cryptocurrency, which will not destroy banks and will not allow users to make censorship resistance transactions, borderless, permitionless, and private.
Those characteristics of bitcoin is making governments worried, so they are creating this false green dilema on bitcoin.
how can Bitcoin be made more efficient and secure without using too much electricity ?,
the current way of confirming transactions, called "proof of work" , uses a lot of energy, so may many people are looking for other ways to do it. is there are some other ways we could do it ? ,
the current way of confirming transactions, called "proof of work" , uses a lot of energy, so may many people are looking for other ways to do it. is there are some other ways we could do it ? ,
Too much/lot of energy are just empty words if you don't have some objective data to show. When you read various articles that claim that Bitcoin consumes too much energy, do they say that this share is 0.5%. maybe 1% or 5% of the total electricity consumption? According to some data, energy losses at the world level in one year are about 50 000 TWh, and someone correct me if I'm wrong, Bitcoin does not consume more than 300 TWh per year at the moment.
It may seem like a lot, but in fact it is not, and I will ask the question : "Would the world be a nicer and greener place if those 300 TWh were consumed by banks, Christmas and New Year lights, or if they were simply lost in the grid?"
No yet known with the advantages of Proof-of-Work. First things first, no other mechanism gives solution to the well known Byzantine generals' problem. This means that no other mechanism is objective; Proof-of-Stake, which is the second most known mechanism introduces subjectivity into play.
the current way of confirming transactions, called "proof of work" , uses a lot of energy
There isn't, and there is unlikely to be one with the same advantages of Proof-of-Work. Instead of spending hours to figure out such a mechanism, why can't we accept that good things require good amounts of energy to work?
how can Bitcoin be made more efficient and secure without using too much electricity ?,
the current way of confirming transactions, called "proof of work" , uses a lot of energy, so may many people are looking for other ways to do it. is there are some other ways we could do it ? , and
what are the pros and cons of each? how do we make sure that the new way is still secure and that bad people can't cheat the system?
the current way of confirming transactions, called "proof of work" , uses a lot of energy, so may many people are looking for other ways to do it. is there are some other ways we could do it ? , and
what are the pros and cons of each? how do we make sure that the new way is still secure and that bad people can't cheat the system?
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