How would bitcoin difficulty adjustment work in reduced energy environment?

pooya87

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Quote from: ajaxtempest on May 14, 2022, 12:40:05 AM

I mean to say that govts start trying to starve the miners with cutting electricity to mining farms and raiding solar farms (off grid even)

The mining farm would simply relocated to another country that doesn't have a dictatorship that raids their business. Even if they seize their hardware the hashrate would still increase in other places since the profitability of mining increases for them (due to lower hashrate and same difficulty before adjustment) hence previously turned off miners would come online and new ASIC purchases would be placed.

It happened with China and mining farms migrated to neighbor countries in Asia and have been operating there ever since.

tranthidung

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Quote from: DaveF on May 14, 2022, 11:07:04 AM

Wow people have a really short memory.
Let's take a look at what happened when China more or less kicked out all of the miners a year ago.

Look the hashrate fell and then over the next few months climbed back up and kept on going.

True Dave. Bitcoin is here to stay so hashrate will have higher highs. Difficulty shocks are part of whale manipulation in the past but thanks to Lightning network and Segwit, there is less congestion on Bitcoin network so less panic from stucked transaction in mempool

If people want to check estimate on difficulty retarget, let's check with Bitraw.com

The history of Bitcoin difficulty adjustment (in percent)

franky1

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surprising to most. the energy usage of bitcoin mining is not over 200TW/Y like certain propagandists have suggested. its more like 40TW/Y for the average of 2021

but lets say the U.N. got together and wrote a law ensuring all countries enforce that their respective power companies 'cap' their utility to known mining industry to a point that collectively halts at 40TW/Y world wide.

well here is how things play out
doing the maths.
using the last gen bitmain 110terrahash asics using 3.25kwh
the hashrate would stabilise at about 154exahash

the next gen 198terrahash for 5.3kwh
the hashrate would stabilise at about 170exahash

the next gen 140terrahash for 3.01kwh
the hashrate would stabilise at about 212exahash

the next gen 255terrahash for 5.3kwh
the hashrate would stabilise at about 219exahash

so even with an electric cap. the hashrate/difficulty can still grow. and from the numbers from this year(110th 3.24lwh) to next years release of asic generations(255th 5.3kwh) the hashrate can grow by 36% in a year,(~150->220) with no extra electric requirements

which then means. flipping the scenario.. if the U.N said lets reduce the 'cap' by 36% then mining would still in a years time be at the same hashrate/difficulty as now. meaning less electric but not less hashpower

(side note to numerical knitpickers. yes i know 2021 seen hashrate over 154exa.. but year long of 2021 the number was way below 150 at the beginning, thus the average for the year was 154)

DaveF

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Wow people have a really short memory.
Let's take a look at what happened when China more or less kicked out all of the miners a year ago.

Look the hashrate fell and then over the next few months climbed back up and kept on going.
If it happens again the same thing will happen. For a few weeks the blocks will take longer and people will pay a bit more in fees. Then the difficulty will adjust down and things should be back to normal. If that does not take care of it a few weeks after that the difficulty will fall even more.

You can't stop all the miners, hell as was shown you can't even stop most of the miners.

-Dave

tranthidung

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Farewell o_e_l_e_o

Bitcoin has a protocol to retarget its network difficulty after 2016 blocks that is around 14 days.

When total hashrate drops from the one at previous difficulty and stay at lower figure, less capacity to find blocks and handle transactions, difficulty will be retargeted. The network and the algorithm does not care what is reason behind the total hashrate drops. Reasons can be whatever factors affect on the miners, mining farm such as floods, electricity cost soars, Bitcoin plummets in price, government bans on Bitcoin etc.

Doan9269

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Quote from: ajaxtempest on May 13, 2022, 06:58:25 AM

What if energy reqd to mine\verify transactions is greatly reduced by authorities. The electricity consumption is also reduced, how would then bitcoin eco system work?

Let's first discuss the means this could be reduce and achieved, as long as they keep up the electricity supply currently being used without worth out an alternative then nothing can reduce the rate of its consumption, resently i heard about the new developed ASIC miner that produces less sound amd consume lesser power supply unlike the existing ones, but still yet that's not enough.

The alternative is to better get another means for the power supply which could be as effective as the electric power supply, though many researcher have been working on implementing the renewable energy source and the likes which could be pretty good for a start alternatively.

Charles-Tim

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Quote from: ajaxtempest on May 14, 2022, 12:40:05 AM

I mean to say that govts start trying to starve the miners with cutting electricity to mining farms and raiding solar farms (off grid even)
We move to mining block on home electricity connections with less than 10kw load.

You should face reality than what is not. What is happening in the world now from bitcoin critics is that bitcoin is significantly contributing to global warming by producing a greenhouse gas which is carbon gases its mining is producing. Some bitcoin miniers are using green (clean) energy, clean energy are the energies that do not produce green house gases to the environment, like electricity generated from solar, wind, nuclear and well constructed hydroelectric power plants. Out of 100% hashrates generated, over 50% are generated by clean energies, and miners are working towards going fully using clean energy.

Yet, bitcoin contributes less to global warming if compared to other industries that the government are lenient about.

Quote from: Charles-Tim on February 01, 2022, 06:31:40 AM

Conclusion
In the grand scheme of things, the carbon emissions emitted by electricity providers supplying the Bitcoin mining network are inconsequential. At 0.08 % of global CO2 emissions, removing the entire mining network from global demand—and thereby depriving hundreds of millions of people of their only hope for a fair and accessible form of money—would not amount to anything more than a rounding error.

You will find this Coinshares report interesting:

The bitcoin mining network CoinShares research

So, why would the government go against bitcoin mining? No good reason.

About difficulty adjustment, it is done every 2016 blocks which is approximately every 2 weeks. If bitcoin hashrate is increasing or decreasing, the difficulty is adjusted in a way new blocks are mined approximately every 10 minutes on average.

ajaxtempest

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I mean to say that govts start trying to starve the miners with cutting electricity to mining farms and raiding solar farms (off grid even)
We move to mining block on home electricity connections with less than 10kw load.

pooya87

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Quote from: ajaxtempest on May 13, 2022, 06:58:25 AM

What if energy reqd to mine\verify transactions is greatly reduced by authorities.

And how would they do that?!
It is like saying "authorities are going to greatly reduce the energy consumption by your PC"! They simply can't, the technology decides how much electricity is consumed by hardware. ASICs are super efficient and the advances in ASIC production changes that consumption which is happening already.

Then total hashrate (the number of ASICs mining bitcoin) can not be changed by authorities either, because they can't tell individuals not to mine bitcoin or dictate it all over the world. For example even in China with the ban on mining, there are still home miners mining bitcoin. Or for example we don't care that China banned mining, we still continue mining bitcoin in our country.

That's what being decentralized is.

OgNasty

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Quote from: ajaxtempest on May 13, 2022, 06:58:25 AM

What if energy reqd to mine\verify transactions is greatly reduced by authorities. The electricity consumption is also reduced, how would then bitcoin eco system work?

The same way it does now. Huh

Electricity consumption for miners has ALWAYS been reduced throughout Bitcoin's history. This results in a higher hashrate and more security for the network.

From your question, it sounds like you mean to ask what would happen if hashrate decreases. That answer is already given above, the network difficulty is reduced after the ~2 week period and the network keeps on going. This has happened before many times throughout Bitcoin's history as well. It's never been a problem or allowed attacks on the ecosystem. It's how the system is designed to function.

jackg

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https://bit.ly/387FXHi lightning theory

If you mean by cutting off miners, if the energy was reduced by half for example it'll take 16-20 minutes for each block to be mined on average (double).

As said above, difficulty and the network adjusts based on how much hash power is set to mine over a 2016 block period (approximately 14 days).

Welsh

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The difficulty adjusts based on the overall hash rate. It wouldn't change because of energy efficiency technically. It would only adjust if the hash rate changes, either way. So, Bitcoin is going to be mined around 2140, and the difficult will keep on adjusting, to make sure that happens. So, if we get a massive increase in miners i.e hash rate, the difficulty will rise. If we have a drop, the difficulty will become easier.

That's basically the idea of it. Obviously, there will be some variation. So, anything to do with energy doesn't really effect it directly. The authorities that you speak of, don't exist in terms of Bitcoin. The authorities, i.e the government can't directly change the difficulty since Bitcoin is decentralised. If that makes sense?

ajaxtempest

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What if energy reqd to mine\verify transactions is greatly reduced by authorities. The electricity consumption is also reduced, how would then bitcoin eco system work?

Topic: How would bitcoin difficulty adjustment work in reduced energy environment? (Read 215 times)