Reading scientific reports about Monero's environmental impact.
If anyone knows any further about this, I'm open for an unbiased talk about this topic, I would like to learn more.
@voxel which reports have you read? Got links?
@hyc Sure, currently just collected and skim over them some are paywalled sadly.
In some Monero is just mentioned once or grouped together with other PoW coins
https://www.mdpi.com/1911-8074/16/4/218
https://www.researchgate.net/figure/The-carbon-footprint-of-any-cryptocurrency-would-depend-on-the-energy-demand-of-the_fig3_328744792
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-022-18686-8
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41893-018-0152-7
https://www.oecd.org/en/publications/environmental-impact-of-digital-assets_8d834684-en.html
https://news.unm.edu/news/the-environmental-cost-of-cryptocurrency-mines
Can't guarantee any accuracy or trustworthiness of the linked articles, I've just collected for now.
@voxel as hashrate follows price, by marketcap it's fair to say Monero mining costs multiple orders of magnitude less energy than many other PoW coins.
@hyc Well, as far as I'm aware PoS is still much more environment-friendly than PoW. And there are other validation methods which I sadly have no further information on.
There might be reasons why you might want to prefer PoW over PoS, but with the current information I got the energy "waste" of PoW validation seems unnecessary. Have to dig deeper to tell for sure.
I'm currently trying to figure out mostly for personal reasons if I'll make use of Monero or not, with all its Pro's and Con's. And environmental impact is definitely not something I'll ignore, how great Monero might in other categories be.
@voxel PoW vs PoS has been debated ad nauseam already. PoS is unworkable for many reasons but most obviously because your stake is the number of coins you own. Publishing the number of coins you own defeats the purpose of Monero's confidentiality guarantees. It's a non-starter.
@hyc @voxel also #PoS inherently rewards rich users and concentrates power even more than the nature of #PoW would, as running a #Monero #node or #miner doesn't require expensive custom #ASIC|s that are going to become manufactured #eWaste down the line and can't be repurposed for anything but being the noisiest and most expesive space heaters!
https://infosec.space/@kkarhan/114638656071829798
- Or to put it into perspective: PoS implementations like #Ethereum only rewarded already abdurdly rich capital holders and wiped everyone else out due to every PoS mechanism demanding a minimum of staked coins AND even if it didn't all of them inherently reward staking more with a higher "rent" / "reward"!
Case in point: There are only ugly and filthy solutions to that problem and Monero chose the "least worst" they could: Shure it still has problems but those are at least fully known, understood and working as in 'communities can outnumber single rich entities'...
@kkarhan
PoS in Ethereum has similar returns on capital as other investments. Currently 2-3% per year. It scales with demand - there is a market mechanism at play.
Claiming that PoS inherently concentrates power in the wealthy misses the point - it mirrors the wider financial market which, yes, benefits the already wealthy.
This is a more fundamental problem that must be solved elsewhere.
And though a single validator is limited to 32 Eth minimum, pooled staking makes these 2%
@hyc @voxel
...returns available to anyone, just as anyone can invest in stock funds. That alone doesn't make things "fair". Our markets, taxes, regulations still favour the wealthy.
PoW is also a capital intensive business and with more capital you can achieve higher returns due to economies of scale.
Ultimately these are fundamental issues with capitalist markets refracted through the lens of cryptocurrency generation and distribution.
Inequality will not be solved here.
@cobordism @hyc @voxel Noone claims that #Monero will help "#AbolishCapitalism"!
- That would be deranged and in complete denial of reality.
What is however evident is that only #PostPrivacy #Shitcoins can do #ProofOfStake as unlike #ProofOfWork it inherently necessitates #PostPrivacy as in all transactions and amounts are public.
- I'm pretty shure that #PoS cannot be implemented (even if #Monero devs wanted it to!) without making removing Monero's #privacy that it can retain under #PoW.
Again: I call it "least worst" for a reason; not "great", "good" or even "okay"...
@cobordism @hyc @voxel IMHO the only thing that moving #Ethereum from #PoW to #PoS achieved is raising the wall to make it harder, more expensive amd less attractive for #SmallInvestors to fiddle with it.
- #NotFinancialAdvice but I would've always disrecommended that espechally after #Buterin et. al. decided to #Backroll due to them and others having been #HornyForMoney and wanting to pull funds from #TheDAO.
Demondtrably, #EthereumClassic would at least be more trustworthy, alas that's an Opinion based off 'vibes'…
@cobordism @hyc @voxel It's called #mathematics, because #ASIC|s are simply manufactured #eWaste by virtue of being non-reuseable nor upcycle-able.
- A #CPU or #GPU can at least be #reused for different tasks and even #upcycled to be used in #consumer chassis with an adequate cooling system.
Your reply indicates that you ain't aware of fundamentals like what an ASIC is, that producing ICs is inherently bad for the envoirment and that these are just bad per concept, thus you've disqualified yourself with the saneist reply from any discussion.
- I'll give you a timeout of a few days. Feel free to sincerely apologize after that...
@kkarhan @hyc @voxel
My point was that Ethereum staking can be run on a NUC or even on a Rasperry Pi.
There are no ASICs here. So:
"#Ethereum uses #ASIC|s which makes it way more polluting due to these being useless for anything else."
is completely false. misinformation.
meanwhile:
" the only thing that moving #Ethereum from #PoW to #PoS achieved is raising the wall to make it harder, more expensive amd less attractive for #SmallInvestors to fiddle with it."
Is also demonstrably false.
Rocket pool has a minimum of 0.01 ETH to participate. Other pools have no minimum.
While you do need 32 ETH to run your own independent non-pooled validator, that is nothing compared to the capital requirements to run and independent btc pow miner that is not part of a mining pool. We're talking industrial scale before it is viable!
Criticism is fine. Lies are not. Deliberately misleading statements are not. FUD is not.
@cobordism @kkarhan @voxel you can run a Monero miner on a 5 year old smartphone. There's no insurmountable capital requirement there.
@cobordism @kkarhan @voxel you should read up on p2pool. Industrial scale is irrelevant for Monero mining.
@cobordism @kkarhan @voxel p2pool fully decentralized and trustless. It's not a centralized mining pool, and can't exitscam.
@cobordism @hyc @voxel no, #ProfOfStake does concentrate wealth by virtue of having a minimum cap to allow for participation.
- In case of #Ethereum that #PoS cap was (please feel free to correct me) at 10 ETH, so deep in tue 6-figure (€) area...
With #ProofOfWork there is at least no minimum #hashrate to participate and participating in a #pool dies not necessitate to trust someone with funds.