> Ethereum's energy consumption will be reduced by ~99.95% following The Merge from proof-of-work (PoW) to proof-of-stake (PoS). After The Merge, Ethereum will use dramatically less carbon to be more secure.

How many years has it been, at this point? I distinctly recall "imminent" plans to switch over to PoS as early as 2019.

I'm surprised to see Paypal only uses 0.26 TWh/yr (compared to Bitcoin's 200 TWh/yr and Ethereum's 112 TWh/yr) which includes their offices and data centers[1].

I've heard the argument that if you take into account all the human-associated energy costs Bitcoin's energy use compared to a company like Visa would be comparable. Now I'm not so sure.

Notably this 0.26 TWh/yr number doesn't include things like the energy used by each human to drive to and from work or the amount of energy needed to make the food that fed them that year but now we're getting into some anti-human territory.

Perhaps the goal shouldn't be to minimize energy use but to maximize energy output.

1. https://app.impaakt.com/analyses/paypal-consumed-264100-mwh-...

This doesn't really explain why energy is needed in a blockchain. Every block contains a verifiable proof that energy has been used to mine the block. Given the properties of the algorithm and physical reality, it is also a verifiable proof that certain amount of time has passed. This proof is what enables all participants to verify that the longest chain is the correct one.

Proof-of-work isn't used just to add cost, but to make sure that the longest chain has longest history in physical time, and make it objectively verifiable.

Proof-of-stake doesn't have this property. Whole history can be recreated in a microsecond, and there's no way to tell by looking at the blockchain. Instead, network participants have to ask others for the correct chain, or refer to a trusted source when there are disputes.

Citing Digiconomist numbers is really undermining the credibility of this article. de Vries’s work has been debunked and shown to be garbage literally every time he publishes something (he is a low-level EU central banker, so not really a great authority).

If you want to use something, this is much more credible from Cambridge University (showing radically different numbers): https://ccaf.io/cbeci/index

For an example on what digiconmist gets wrong (there are many!): https://bitcoinmagazine.com/business/not-science-digiconomis...

It’s amazing to compare the energy consumption of a network where the all time high of total worldwide transactions in a 24 hour period is 1.7 million. Compared to the entire energy consumption of a country (Netherlands) with a population of 18 million people.

Just incredible.

I think Ethereum is pretty cool, generally, but there are two downsides this post doesn’t address.

The first is that there’s still no date for The Merge beyond “expected to happen in the second half of 2022.”

Secondly, the Ethereum organization can only ask people nicely to stop mining the POW version of the coin. It’s possible that the current version of the Ethereum blockchain will continue to progress, like Ether Classic has, albeit at a greatly reduced value.

I understand Proof of Stake to be much more centralized and prone to takeovers than proof of work. So if the merge ever actually happens, it would fix the energy consumption issue at the trade-off of security (staking, aka rich get richer).

I'm much more bullish on Chia and proof-of-space/time — same nakamato consensus as proof-of-work without the energy consumption: https://chiapower.org/ Also helps that Chia can be farmed from a raspberry pi or similarly low-performance device, making it so there are over 100k farmers around the world currently.

But when is this merge happening? There is still no date as far as I can see? It's been happening "soon" for years now :(

I really hope it takes off though, because if crypto is here to stay it really should stop wasting so much energy. We'll never solve the climate crisis this way.

> Ethereum will use dramatically less carbon to be more secure

Why is that? PoS security model is fundamentally different from PoW - for instance - you cannot determine which of the two chains is "correct" anymore, you have to consult "a friend" [0]. That's not the case in Bitcoin, where the correct chain is simply the longest.

All PoS algos are very complex and have a ton of seemingly bandaid solutions for various problems that arise when you can create alternate histories freely (even if you use VDFs I think), and there is a disturbing lack of critique on that. So, why is it seen as "more secure"?

[0] https://yanmaani.github.io/proof-of-stake-is-a-scam-and-the-...

Energy use can be computed from first principles given some arbitrary assumptions: average power per node and number of nodes.

There are ARM nodes that require less than 10W. Then there are more conventional servers that require ...150W? Average here is pure guesswork, but error bounds aren't that large - let's say 100W/node.

How many nodes are going to exist - I think 10k is a reasonable maximum number.

The result is 24000kWh per day. At $0.15/kWh, that means $3600 in daily energy costs.

There's also the hardware cost itself and internet connection cost (which can be zero if there's an already paid for connection) - but all in all, total, real expenses to run ethereum become a rounding error of current ones. Guesstimating hw depreciation and connection cost, daily total at $5k translates into $1.825M/year. The value of block rewards during the last 24h is ~$15M.

In other words resources required for running ethereum for ~3 hours now are going to be enough to run it for a year after the merge.

Although validator earnings will be single digit percentages in ether per year, isn't that just the block reward, and all of the transaction fees are also split?

With higher throughput, more strategies that once again saturate the block space, that could be more lucrative than it seems?

Is it fanciful to hope this could - in and of itself - allow several polluting power stations to be decommissioned, and/or appreciably reduce energy prices for the rest of us?

What a magnificent joke that their “The Merge” link 404’s.

The conclusion I take away from their charts is that we should use PayPal?

Proof-of-Stake doesn't solve the Byzantine General's Problem. Therefore, the system no longer has the property of being able to get decentralized consensus

I don’t trust proof of stake, mostly because loads of people who I consider irrational want it to work so desperately.

Proof-of-work actually does work - it is no longer a debate, and these people (many of the same people who were saying “b-b-but tulips” a couple years ago) can’t stand it. I wouldn’t trust them to engineer their way out of a paper bag - definitely not after some muppet on the TV reminds them to get back in line.

Capitalism is still winning again, folks. Deal with it.

It's good to know that soon it will take less energy for people to lose money on crypto.

Been promising this for years with no results

Keep in mind this is all hypothetical and these numbers are not based in any reality. The foundation cites a random wordpress blog on these numbers. (really?)

Even if this merge is done, a greener pyramid scheme doesn’t change anything about the speculators and scams that Ethereum harbours as Ethereum becomes even more centralised and plutocratic.

Gas fee surges will always still be a problem after the merge which only favours the rich that can afford them making Ethereum useless at scale for on chain usecases.