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Comment by mey | Hacker News Reader

I notice you are avoiding listing Bitcoin and PoW Eth here. If https://www.statista.com/statistics/881541/bitcoin-energy-co... is to be believed

1779.11 kWh per single Bitcoin transaction would be

One Bitcoin Edit: Block Mined: 6,404,796,000 J

One Bitcoin Transaction on a Block: 2,287,427 J

One Credit Card Transaction: 5,351 J

Edit: Since the source isn't exactly clear if one transaction is a reference to one block mined or one transaction on that block, I'm going to assume it is for one block mined. I'm going to estimate one block contains 2800 transactions.

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ETH PoW is almost dead. We’re in the multi-client test net stage now. We’re rehearsing the switch multiple times on test nets to make sure it goes perfectly since there’s no takebacks on prod.

The bellow comment calling it “vapor ware” is ignorant.

> ETH PoW is almost dead.

I've been reading variations of the line "Ethereum is only weeks/months away from Proof of Stake" since probably early 2019.

Also doesn't Proof of Stake introduce another set of problems?

> Ethereum is only weeks/months away from Proof of Stake" since probably early 2019.

No, you haven’t. POS was, at best, a year plus away in 2019. No one credible was suggesting “weeks” back then… the beacon chain wasn’t even close to live yet.

ETH2’s beacon chain launched in Dec 2020 successfully, and has been running over a year in parallel with tens of billions in staked currency protecting it. This launched on time. The plan was originally:

1) beacon chain

2) sharding

3) the merge

The merge is when PoS takes over for PoW. The roadmap was changed in mid 2021 to push #3 before #2. That’s what’s about to happen, and I would even now put it in “months” . It won’t be “weeks” until a merge block # is announced, which will itself be weeks after the announcement of a successful testnet campaign (often multiple).

> No one credible

That's the main problem when it comes to this topic, isn't it?

I can’t help you if you ingest random internet comments in Bitcoin maximalist communities as gospel.

I wonder whether the credit card transaction energy includes the energy spent by thousands of bankers traveling to work each day in petrol powered cars to issue the fiat loans that fuel our modern currencies.

Oh there is plenty more in pure energy costs not represented here, but banks do more than just store and move money. Just like crypto currencies being powered by renewable energy, nothing preventing banker cars and data centers from being powered by renewable energy either.

I wonder if the Bitcoin energy includes all the countless people shilling online and traveling by plane to conventions to talk about it and otherwise wasting energy.

Also citing Eth2, which is vaporware.

I mean the beacon chain is online, but the "merge" is always 6 months away. I think it's crazy to see so many billions locked up in a contract for software that hasn't been written yet, but hey, its all funny money anyway.

To that end, it's very humorous that ETH put in a doomsday mechanism to encourage the merge, but we just keep kicking the can down the road.

Kind of tells you a lot about humanity.

The first phase of the transition to ETH2 was implemented on December 1st, 2020, with the launch of the Proof of Stake Beacon Chain. The Beacon Chain has been running without problems for over a year now.

The testnet for the second phase of ETH2 - which is when the execution chain is merged into the Beacon Chain so that Ethereum can fully switch from PoW to PoS and reduce its energy consumption by 99.95% - was launched on December 20th, 2021:

https://blog.ethereum.org/2021/12/20/kintsugi-merge-testnet/

The second phase is expected to be completed before the end of 2022.

Yeah, a testnet launched in 2021 for a project that was supposed to be live in 2019, then 2020, then early 2021 feels a lot like vaporware.

I mean, how many times have we had to diffuse the difficulty bomb? How many more times will we?

The completion of the first and hardest phase, and a testnet for the second phase, is not remotely close to my definition of "vaporware". "Vaporware" doesn't mean "delayed", or "not complete". It means there is no concrete progress toward implementation, i.e. it's vapor.

Listen, I'm glad you're optimistic, but again, we've diffused the difficulty bomb what, 5 times? And each time, the merge is 6-12 months out? And Vitalik himself said that the delays are due to the team not agreeing on the specs of ETH2 (vs. technical constraints)?

I guess we at least agree that your definition of "vaporware" is a lot stricter than mine. Hell, even Duke Nukem Forever came out eventually, so I may very well be wrong.

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