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Alternate cryptocurrencies => Altcoin Discussion => Topic started by: Hubus on March 09, 2015, 11:01:14 AM



Title: Which is the most environmentally friendly, energy-efficient altcoin?
Post by: Hubus on March 09, 2015, 11:01:14 AM
Hello,

I'm still a cryptocurrency newbie, especially technically, but I have often found ideological discussions about Bitcoin and Altcoins, and, of course, also some interesting arguments and inspirations.

Although the Bitcoin will probably win over other cryptocurrencies, I favour learning, developing, evolving systems, so I would regard second generation altcoins as the better ones in principle.

I looked around a bit and found many altcoins which "want to do good" and some claiming to be environmental-friendly. Some seem to want to do good just by being nice ("Karma" coin etc.  :D ), some seem to have (or want to have) some contact to the solar energy industry or other renewable energies etc., which might be an advantage and might be good for the believers (faith seems to me the only thing which most of the second generation altcoins are based on, therefore, IMHO they could die very easily).

BUT for me, the main argument for an environmental-friendly altcoin remains the energy-efficiency. In this respect, in my opinion there might be two phases: The current phase where the coin lives in a small niche, and, more importantly, a second phase where we should assume a wide adoption and a widespread usage and therefore many transactions etc.

There are some short threads about energy efficiency already, but it is from the miner's view, which is not my priority here, but could give important facts:

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=566582.0
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=198191.0

So what are, in your opinion, the "greenest" coins and why?

Mainly by energy-efficiency, but also regarding other advantages and progresses like anonymity, security, transaction speed, rewards for users, etc. etc.

Can we make a list and verify it? E.g. I have read about some claims that coins like

Next NXT,
Peercoin,
Blackcoin BLK,
Energycoin ENRG,
Solarcoin SLR,
...?

claim to be energy-efficient / environmental friendly / "sustainable" etc. Can you confirm or falsify this? Can you further the list?

And there are more "decentralized" coins (POS, proof of stake), or coins with special Hash algorithms which seems to be energy-saving, like for example

Maidsafe,
Vanillacoin,
Deepcoin,
Clams
...?

(I just found a thread on the POS coins: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=455692.0 and https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=458726.0 - is this really THE solution when millions of end-user computers use it?)

Is a distributed network-POS coin always more energy-efficient than other solutions (POW) in an assumed widespread usage?

What are the important parameters to identify an environmental-friendly coin?

Additional question: How energy-efficient is the current fiat currency / credit-card / banking system? How much energy does the existing banking industry (plus the users) eat up with their transactions?

Last but not least, please tell me if this discussion already exists in another thread here - I am sorry then, but I did not find it yet.


Title: Re: Which is the most environmentally friendly, energy-efficient altcoin?
Post by: HCLivess on March 09, 2015, 11:40:23 AM
NXT out of these. It is also the most transparent and advanced one.


Title: Re: Which is the most environmentally friendly, energy-efficient altcoin?
Post by: Hubus on March 09, 2015, 02:34:47 PM
NXT out of these. It is also the most transparent and advanced one.

OK, I lack the knowledge to verify if this is "the best" and only one. Then the other characteristics would come into the equation next (e.g. some kind of "fairness", which perhaps includes no premining etc.).

What would be the possibilities to make it even better? Just even better algorithms and personal user hardware or any other tricks?


Title: Re: Which is the most environmentally friendly, energy-efficient altcoin?
Post by: cassius69 on March 09, 2015, 02:38:05 PM
NXT out of these. It is also the most transparent and advanced one.

OK, I lack the knowledge to verify if this is "the best" and only one. Then the other characteristics would come into the equation next (e.g. some kind of "fairness", which perhaps includes no premining etc.).

What would be the possibilities to make it even better? Just even better algorithms and personal user hardware or any other tricks?

nxt had one of the most unfair distributions in the history of mankind. so 'fairness' is not one of that coins strong suits.


Title: Re: Which is the most environmentally friendly, energy-efficient altcoin?
Post by: 3x2 on March 09, 2015, 02:39:24 PM
Nodecoin is pretty good too. Based on Node.js and transaction speed is faster than any other coin.

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=590421.0


Title: Re: Which is the most environmentally friendly, energy-efficient altcoin?
Post by: Nautica on March 09, 2015, 02:50:57 PM
the most energy efficient ones are definitely proof of stake coins, since their consensus algorithm doesn't rely on any intensive computation


Title: Re: Which is the most environmentally friendly, energy-efficient altcoin?
Post by: iGotSpots on March 09, 2015, 05:32:00 PM
MMXIV and BALLS are tied. 10k uses a bit more resources because of the faster maturity


Title: Re: Which is the most environmentally friendly, energy-efficient altcoin?
Post by: Amph on March 09, 2015, 05:40:45 PM
the one that don't need traditional pow mining, but it's based on pos system


Title: Re: Which is the most environmentally friendly, energy-efficient altcoin?
Post by: DrGrid on March 09, 2015, 08:05:18 PM
Gridcoin - Proof of Stake 2.0 (Blackcoin) base with a mechanism to reward work being done towards BOINC scientific research projects.


Title: Re: Which is the most environmentally friendly, energy-efficient altcoin?
Post by: HalFinneysBrain on March 09, 2015, 08:09:33 PM
Any fully Proof of Stake coin.  No energy is wasted. 


Title: Re: Which is the most environmentally friendly, energy-efficient altcoin?
Post by: EvilDave on March 09, 2015, 10:25:18 PM
NXT out of these. It is also the most transparent and advanced one.

OK, I lack the knowledge to verify if this is "the best" and only one. Then the other characteristics would come into the equation next (e.g. some kind of "fairness", which perhaps includes no premining etc.).

What would be the possibilities to make it even better? Just even better algorithms and personal user hardware or any other tricks?

nxt had one of the most unfair distributions in the history of mankind. so 'fairness' is not one of that coins strong suits.

Yeah, distributed by advertising for investors over a period of 2 months on this forum, so that 73 ordinary BTT users/crypto investors got in on the ground floor.
No-one was whining about unfair distribution the day before the NXT blockchain went live, but as soon as it's successful.........the distribution becomes 'unfair'
I wasn't one of the lucky 73, but I'm certainly not going to bitch them up out of jealousy and butthurt because I wasn't lucky/smart enough to be one of them.

NXT has amazing tech, and is still a good-looking investment. Never forget that all of crypto is pretty much experimental right now.
If you guys have any NXT you don't want...send 'em my way.


Getting back to somewhere on-topic, there's a paper on NXT energy efficiency as compared to Bitcoin:
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1J8uhdshu9epGRrQHBaloGc4itdvuAHZDAUtNDjOhz-8/edit?pli=1


and I suggest that the OP takes an in depth look at how the Proof of Work and Proof of Stake systems work, especially in terms of energy use. 

 


Title: Re: Which is the most environmentally friendly, energy-efficient altcoin?
Post by: Daedelus on March 09, 2015, 11:58:28 PM
*snip*
 (e.g. some kind of "fairness", which perhaps includes no premining etc.).

Define "fairness" please.


Title: Re: Which is the most environmentally friendly, energy-efficient altcoin?
Post by: Hubus on March 10, 2015, 08:38:16 AM
*snip*
 (e.g. some kind of "fairness", which perhaps includes no premining etc.).

Define "fairness" please.

You are right, it's difficult. Environmentalists are often categorized as politically "left", so I meant a distribution so that everyone regardless of wealth can participate and manipulation by wealthy owners should not be possible or easy. Anyway, the environment does not know any categories, so it may be that some "capitalist coins" are more environmentally friendly than others who claim to be "green" but do not have any strong facts to backup their claims. I thought, NXT might be such an example. Anyway, do explicitly "green" coins have some real advantages for the environment?

An Ideal Reserve Clearinghouse, which can fully confirm globally in 500ms, currently only requires a 64-bit half-core with 500MB of RAM that can run Ubuntu 14.04 or equivalent.

No other currency can provide this kind of global certainty at these speeds for such little resources.

Do you mean NXT?

Getting back to somewhere on-topic, there's a paper on NXT energy efficiency as compared to Bitcoin:
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1J8uhdshu9epGRrQHBaloGc4itdvuAHZDAUtNDjOhz-8/edit?pli=1


and I suggest that the OP takes an in depth look at how the Proof of Work and Proof of Stake systems work, especially in terms of energy use.  

I don't know if I can do it "in depth", but yes, I should learn more about this.

Without knowing too much: Is there the possibility that a widely distributed end-user-system consumes more energy (millions of machines) than some specialized and centralized powerful servers? But anyway, the end users always have to use their machines. Only that in the first case, their processors would have to do more work. But I assume, this additional processor work is quite small.

One thing is for sure: If you just want to save and keep your money, a paper wallet is quite energy-friendly... (you could even print it on someone else's printer, so that you do not have to have a printer, which consumes energy and resources in production...) ;-) ...A paper wallet even needs less paper than a suitcase full of money...


Title: Re: Which is the most environmentally friendly, energy-efficient altcoin?
Post by: EvilDave on March 10, 2015, 09:14:06 AM
Yup, it is entirely possible that a de-centralised system will consume more energy than the equivalent centralised system.
De-centralisation requires more redundancy and excess system capacity than the equivalent completely centralised system.

Paper wallets are useful, but you have to remember that the function of both BTC 'Proof of Work' mining and NXT 'Proof of Stake' forging is to secure their respective networks,  validate transactions and create their blockchains......without miners or forgers, no crypto-currency can function.


Thinking about 'green' coins: it's a pity that environmentalist thinking is seen as 'left', I'm of the opinion that as we all have to live on a fragile mudball floating in an unfriendly universe, we should really look after the mudball as well as we can. It's in our own best interests as a species.....really.

The main claim that NXT (and other PoS coins) can make for being environmentally friendly is their energy efficiency. Without the need for energy intensive PoW mining calculations, PoS systems use massively less power. The NXT paper posted above came up with figures that suggest that NXT uses less than 1% of the power needed to run BTC, assuming both currencies had the same transaction volumes.


Title: Re: Which is the most environmentally friendly, energy-efficient altcoin?
Post by: fundomatic on March 10, 2015, 09:42:53 AM
I'm bias,

but BitShares DPOS (delegated proof of stake) economy of securing a blockchain was what determined its current design.

http://wiki.bitshares.org/index.php/DPOS_or_Delegated_Proof_of_Stake

edit:
Here's the discussion on the economy of DPOS (but the images has gone somewhere).
https://bitsharestalk.org/index.php?topic=5564.0



Title: Re: Which is the most environmentally friendly, energy-efficient altcoin?
Post by: Ingatqhvq on March 10, 2015, 10:06:48 AM
All proof of stake coins are  environmentally friendly altcoin.
Like NXT, qora.
but not every one like pos coins, they claim pow is the only way to keep decenterised.


Title: Re: Which is the most environmentally friendly, energy-efficient altcoin?
Post by: speedy1987 on March 10, 2015, 11:16:02 AM
Every POS coin is energy efficient. POS is the future.


Title: Re: Which is the most environmentally friendly, energy-efficient altcoin?
Post by: Daedelus on March 10, 2015, 05:59:06 PM
An Ideal Reserve Clearinghouse, which can fully confirm globally in 500ms, currently only requires a 64-bit half-core with 500MB of RAM that can run Ubuntu 14.04 or equivalent.

No other currency can provide this kind of global certainty at these speeds for such little resources.

Do you mean NXT?

NXT, like all other Proof-of-Stake cryptocurrencies, consumes seconds for full confirmation with some risks still not yet solved.

The Ideal Reserve (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=960938.0) consumes almost always only 500ms, mostly due to the time consumed by data circumtransmitting the globe.  

The Ideal Reserve is not at risk of a Clearinghouse possessing more than half of the processing power or more than half of the total issue.

Have you shown a whitepaper on this or just keep spamming claims? Latency is the speed limit for confirmations in a decentralused network. If you can get all the world to agree concensus in 500ms, suggests to me you are talking about a decentralised system.


Title: Re: Which is the most environmentally friendly, energy-efficient altcoin?
Post by: Daedelus on March 11, 2015, 08:37:05 AM
So it is closed source? And somehow solves problems latency... How can some set up 300-3000 nodes (to get a somewhat realistic network topology) all over the world to test your claims?

I have no doubt you can send a message across the world and it be received by another node in 100s of milliseconds. But to reconcile 300 nodes every 500ms with each of the other node in the network to get consensus/agreement between all sounds... imaginative.

I'll put this in the "Sounds good but scam until proven otherwise" category for now  :D


Title: Re: Which is the most environmentally friendly, energy-efficient altcoin?
Post by: HCLivess on March 11, 2015, 09:57:57 AM
NXT


Title: Re: Which is the most environmentally friendly, energy-efficient altcoin?
Post by: Hubus on March 11, 2015, 12:21:28 PM
Every POS coin is energy efficient. POS is the future.

Might be. But there must be differences, i.e. some must be even better than others (remember we talk about millions of machines, so each Watt of energy is some Megawatts in our assumed global system).


Title: Re: Which is the most environmentally friendly, energy-efficient altcoin?
Post by: Daedelus on March 11, 2015, 01:09:29 PM
Peerexplorer.com (http://Peerexplorer.com) gives an estimate of the cost of Nxt's network per day on the front page, currently

Quote
On a average 300 Watt, 0,15$ per kWh the energy cost would be 332.64$ a day.

Remember, number of nodes aren't fixed so this is for the average number of nodes online. I don't know what the cost of other POS systems are but I think you will only be able to do general comparisons between different versions of POS.



Title: Re: Which is the most environmentally friendly, energy-efficient altcoin?
Post by: Hubus on March 11, 2015, 02:14:41 PM
we should really look after the mudball as well as we can. It's in our own best interests as a species.....really.

Absolutely. And also take into account the beauty of it, which cannot be measured in money or in terms of "do we need this to survive?".

The NXT paper posted above came up with figures that suggest that NXT uses less than 1% of the power needed to run BTC, assuming both currencies had the same transaction volumes.

Getting back to somewhere on-topic, there's a paper on NXT energy efficiency as compared to Bitcoin:
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1J8uhdshu9epGRrQHBaloGc4itdvuAHZDAUtNDjOhz-8/edit?pli=1

In this paper, it's not only just "less than 1 %", let's look at the exact claim there, citation:

Quote
"Nxt will require 66 MWh while Bitcoin requires 520,000 MWh per year.
520,000 MWh / 66 MWh =7,878
Therefore, Bitcoin uses approximately 8000 times more energy to power the network"

That would be about 0.013 percent the energy consumption of BTC if the calculation is right! Additionally, no extra mining hardware has to be produced, which adds to the ecological footprint (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ecological_footprint).

I really think we should immediately drop Bitcoins and bitcoin mining and go for a better future...


Title: Re: Which is the most environmentally friendly, energy-efficient altcoin?
Post by: vipgelsi on March 11, 2015, 02:34:17 PM
Solarcoin once it switches to Pos


Title: Re: Which is the most environmentally friendly, energy-efficient altcoin?
Post by: EvilDave on March 11, 2015, 05:28:56 PM

The NXT paper posted above came up with figures that suggest that NXT uses less than 1% of the power needed to run BTC, assuming both currencies had the same transaction volumes.

Getting back to somewhere on-topic, there's a paper on NXT energy efficiency as compared to Bitcoin:
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1J8uhdshu9epGRrQHBaloGc4itdvuAHZDAUtNDjOhz-8/edit?pli=1

In this paper, it's not only just "less than 1 %", let's look at the exact claim there, citation:

Quote
"Nxt will require 66 MWh while Bitcoin requires 520,000 MWh per year.
520,000 MWh / 66 MWh =7,878
Therefore, Bitcoin uses approximately 8000 times more energy to power the network"

That would be about 0.013 percent the energy consumption of BTC if the calculation is right! Additionally, no extra mining hardware has to be produced, which adds to the ecological footprint (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ecological_footprint).

I really think we should immediately drop Bitcoins and bitcoin mining and go for a better future...

I've spent some time going through the paper, and I find some of the assumptions on energy consumption for NXT to be a little optimistic, which is why I'm being cautious in quoting it's findings. My 'less than 1%' is definitely an understatement, but I'd rather be cautious on claims like this.

Any way you look at it, NXT is massively more energy efficient that BTC or any other PoW currency.


Title: Re: Which is the most environmentally friendly, energy-efficient altcoin?
Post by: Hubus on March 12, 2015, 07:59:18 AM
Solarcoin once it switches to Pos

Any way you look at it, NXT is massively more energy efficient that BTC or any other PoW currency.

I told you, I'm new to cryptocurrencies, and I came to them from the spreading Bitcoin. It seems that the public and also the politicians and bankers begin to seriously think of using Bitcoin now. Which is a sad thing, as I think we proved that it is already outdated.

So I can only repeat, the next step should be to compare PoS Coins, improve them, and take the best ones. But I don't know if we can solve the problem here (e.g. is Solarcoin better than Next?). Some sound scientific work should be done on it...


Title: Re: Which is the most environmentally friendly, energy-efficient altcoin?
Post by: Hubus on March 15, 2015, 12:59:30 PM
I've found something else:

Burstcoin, with "proof of hdd capacity (POC) mining" https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=731923.0 .

I imagine it will use more energy than PoS, but less than than PoW. Anyway, interesting innovation.


Title: Re: Which is the most environmentally friendly, energy-efficient altcoin?
Post by: Hubus on March 15, 2015, 06:10:51 PM
A different question:

Would some of you Burst-people mind to explain in my thread, how energy-saving your technology proof of capacity (POC) mining is? I would like someone to compare it to POS and POW:

"Which is the most environmentally friendly, energy-efficient altcoin?":
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=982957.0

For good estimation, we would need a good calculation, of course, and for proof we would need some measurements and extrapolation...

But maybe we could get an idea.

Thank you.

A simple way to put burst mining, is that it is just storing your bitcoin hash rate for hours and hours until ur HDD is full (this is called "plotting"), and then reusing all of that hash rate every 4 minutes(all you have to do is read it and submit it to the network).

The great thing about this is, a $120 investment will get you 4tb....and only be drawing 5-10 watts(CPU adds to this, but nvm that now). This is a few $ / year in power. Now, with BTC, a similar investment would result in an asic which may draw a few hundred dollars in power(don't quote this asic bit, i'm way out of touch with that world since burst). The result of this is, as price drops, BTC miners are forced to turn their miners off, but Burst miners can continue, all that will happen is that roi will get further away. This means that there less danger off the network shrinking and being 51% ed.

Also, with Burst, due to the fact that you first have to plot, it is very hard to just bring a load of power online, it'll take you a while to plot it all, with btc, plugin the asic and ur on your way.

Now if you do consider the fact that CPU's are required for mining, then you would have to add a few watts per HDD.....at least you do if you set up a dedicated mining rig...or a farm.....but not if you are merely mining with ur free space. Those who are just mining with their main computer, well, the comp is o anyway, 0 extra power is used. That's really, really decentralized.


Title: Re: Which is the most environmentally friendly, energy-efficient altcoin?
Post by: Hubus on March 17, 2015, 10:42:14 AM
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=731923.msg10783246#msg10783246


Proof of Capacity energy usage compared to Proof of Stake

You still need a computer and hard drive running to power Proof of Stake... but let's say that you do add 50 3TB drives to that computer, you could split your plots up across all of these of hard drives, and the only turn on two hard drives at a time per block.  With POC2.. you'll only need to turn on 1 hard drives, one that stores signatures, one that stores the current scoop being read.

Otherwise, it'd consume 50 * 10 Watts per hard drive.  So this equals 500 Watts = 0.5 kW

1 kW*hr costs 12 cents.  Meaning 0.5 kWhr costs 0.5 * $0.12 = $0.06/hr 

$0.06/hr * 24 hr/day * 365 days/yr = $500 of electricity per year

In my mind, eventually a device that starts switching drives off and on in my mind could be POC's version of an ASIC. This could bring the power usage down to about 12W total since you'd still have 1 hard drive running continually, plus the device would use some tiny amount of power.

Point being, there is definitely financial incentive to create such a device, which would definitely sell to POC mining farms, and once this type of device for connecting these hard drives to the network is being made, I suspect it'll pretty widely used for plugging in a variable number of drives.

Back to how much energy POC uses vs POS, and assume an average computer uses 300 Watts, POC uses 500 extra Watts that means that POC uses 800 Watts.

800 W / 300W = approx 2.7 as much energy as POS.  So it's reasonable.

In other words POC2 uses 270% more energy than Proof of Stake.


Proof of Capacity energy usage compared to Proof of Work

Assume you go with the above assumption that you connect 50  hard drives to the computer, and each hard drive costs $100 each.  That means $5000 worth of hard drives which uses 800 W.  Now let's pick a random Bitcoin miner.  The TerraMiner IV which to err on Bitcoin's side, let's say it costs $1,000 USD (I can find it on Amazon for $750 - http://www.amazon.com/CoinTerra-Terraminer-Iv/dp/B00JK64DXA but the original price was $1,200) and uses 2.1kW .

So $5000 worth of bitcoin miners = $5000 / $1,000 = 5 machines. 
5 machines equals 5* 2.1KW worth of energy = 10.5 kW.

So POW uses 10.5 kW of electricity for an equivalent investment POC uses .8 kW of electricity.


10.5/0.8 KW = 13.13 times

Which means that POW uses 13.13 more energy than POC.

The plus sides and reasons why POC beats POS though that POC is more decentralized, ASIC proof meaning even the little guy can mine, and more secure than POS, etc.  And no history key attack potential plus mining is a great way to get new people into crypto currency.  You can mine POC with no money spent buying coins first..  once we're doing 100s or 1000s of transactions, it'll be profitable for every day people to connect their extra hard drive space to the Burst network and join the network.  Once they have free coins, they are more likely to be long term adopters.

And if you need proof regarding the last point that getting miners to join the network will be easier.. go look at Burst's estimated network size:
http://burstcoin.eu/charts/estimated-network-size

It's barely profitable to mine because people are willing to contribute hard drive space toward earning 'free' coins.. meaning this will be a great way to get people interested in Proof of Capacity currencies in the future because they are ASIC proof.

Would like some feedback then I'll go post this over in that thread.


Title: Re: Which is the most environmentally friendly, energy-efficient altcoin?
Post by: Hubus on March 17, 2015, 10:49:26 AM
I also found some discussion of Bitcoin enerrgy comsumption in a German blog:

http://bitcoinblog.de/2014/10/15/wie-viel-strom-verbrat-das-bitcoin-netzwerk/



Title: Re: Which is the most environmentally friendly, energy-efficient altcoin?
Post by: Enzyme on March 17, 2015, 10:56:32 AM
CPU mining is cost effective and may earn high rewards depending on the cryptocurrency you're mining.

With that mentioned, Magi has a fair mining system and is one of the easiest coins to mine.


Title: Re: Which is the most environmentally friendly, energy-efficient altcoin?
Post by: mczarnek on March 17, 2015, 01:24:47 PM
CPU mining is cost effective and may earn high rewards depending on the cryptocurrency you're mining.

With that mentioned, Magi has a fair mining system and is one of the easiest coins to mine.

How does MAGI prevent ASIC/GPU mining?

Seems to me like Burst is the more ASIC resistant and energy efficient choice. If it's CPU mined then what prevents ASICs, seems to me like it only means that ASICs rewrote more complicated rules in that scheme.


Title: Re: Which is the most environmentally friendly, energy-efficient altcoin?
Post by: Hubus on March 17, 2015, 11:10:56 PM
13 X is nothing to write home about.  13000x would be!  130x would be somewhat interesting. it's not groundbreaking technology.  this comparison isn't that useful, POC has other aspects over POW that are more interesting.
13x means that POW will get better w.r.t. energy usage as ASIC chips get smaller.  POW won't because there's no control over HDD.  SSD will give it another leap since they use less energy over spinners.  but again, when ssd completely replaced spinners POW chips will be much smaller and more energy efficient anyway.
POC vs POW in terms of energy usage is not a "winning" comparison.

" and assume an average computer uses 300 Watts"

What PC uses 300 watts of power?

An I7 running 100% will only pull roughly 90watts (CPU).  POC only has the CPU at 100% for roughly 1-2min MAX per block.  During block resting time the PC only pulls 50-75 watts.  The only time a PC will ever pull 300+watts is if it has GPU's crunching away.  The entire comparison is based on a PC pulling 300watts, which is a nice number to talk about, but not even close to reality.

This number can be lowered even further by using CPU's that pull less power and are suited for a POC rig.

It's a nice comparison and full of detail, but the 300W assumption I think hurts the data.

It's a nice comparison and full of detail, but the 300W assumption I think hurts the data.
Yeah..that's is a calculation for a farm....Mobile CPU's(laptop) are way lower power than that, and man, some of the mini pc's for $100 could probably handle 12tb+ on less than 20 watts. Also, the biggest thing for me about Burst is that ANYONE will ALWAYS be able to mine. You can't beat spare hdd space. Also, low price won't stop miners, which then won't make 51% attack easier.

PoC2 is partially CPU/ASIC mineable (inverse hash lookup is inherently TMTO (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space%E2%80%93time_tradeoff)) up to certain ratio (depending on power efficiency, over 50% for ASIC). The power usage is considerably more compared to PoC1, but also scales better, solves the NaS problem through the PoW element etc.


in this whole discussion about future technologies i miss holographic storage devices completely and would like them to be included.
what if you can store hundreds tb of plots without any energy usage while idleing?
can someone familar with the numbers add this to the calculation please?

one of the companies officially working on this is akonia holographics (http://akoniaholographics.com/).
they got a in 2005 filed patent granted mid last year.
https://www.google.de/patents/US8786923
i think they required the time for the market to become ready for what they have.
if at some point you can use such devices in production energy costs for storage are almost zeroed out and you discuss about asic based miners cause your cpus cant handle the load.

I've got some problems with the numbers, and a bigger problem with something thats been totally overlooked.

The assumption that the "average" PC uses 300W has been raised earlier, so I'll skip that - but you have "That means $5000 worth of hard drives which uses 800 W." That indicates a 16W load per drive 24*7. Looking at the specs of the drives I'm using - WD Reds - the spec sheet says 2.5 to 3.3W Idle, 3.3 - 4.5 active. Lets be generous and say that on average given the bursty nature of Burst - 4W average 24 * 7, so the assumed rate is 4x high. So actual PoW/PoC is more like 52 than 13.

The bigger issue I have is that you've only looked at cost of running the two competitors - but what about the income difference ?

Assuming those 50 HDD's are 3TB drives, we have (based on current difficulty and price)
Burst:
Income: 150TB = 28,613 Burst/Day = $12.44 /day
Cost: 0.2KW/H * 24 H * $0.12 KWH = $0.58 /day
Profit/loss:$11.86 / day

Bitcoin: Assumes 1.6TH from the Terraminer IV (Based on current difficulty / price - and BTC difficulty is increasing faster than Burst)
Income: $3.11 / TH * 8 TH = $24.88 / day
Cost: 5 * 2.1 KW/h * 24H * 0.12 KWH = $30.24
Profit/Loss: ($5.36) / day

So in PoW, with this particular miner, your ROI is .... Never. You're digging yourself deeper into a hole as soon as you turn it on. With PoC you ROI is "someday" depending on the capacity of the drives, but as long as its at least 150GB/drive - you make a profit and an ROI.

H.


Title: Re: Which is the most environmentally friendly, energy-efficient altcoin?
Post by: HalFinneysBrain on March 17, 2015, 11:13:01 PM
All of the Proof of Stake coins are energy efficient. 

None of them are more environmentally friendly than the others, they are all low cost to run the network.  Some of them spend more effort branding themselves as eco friendly than others do.


Title: Re: Which is the most environmentally friendly, energy-efficient altcoin?
Post by: Hubus on March 18, 2015, 07:27:35 AM
All of the Proof of Stake coins are energy efficient.  

None of them are more environmentally friendly than the others, they are all low cost to run the network.

I'm not so sure about the "no difference". For example, some wallets seem to take more processor and RAM capacity than others when they run, and also the download time for their blockchains is different (which might be not comparable as they have different network client abundance yet).

Might be that the small differences in POS are not so important as long as it seems to be the least energy comsuming technology.

In general, one should also be careful with labeling POS as generally eco-friendly, as with a wide distribution, one would have to take into accout the spreading of computers and smartphones, which can cause environmental problems (production, recycling, electronic waste).

To be eco-friendly, maybe there should be the possibility of crypto-banks, where people go and share hardware/administration (like driving together in a train and not each on their own by car.).

Sometimes people stress the ability of yet poor people who have no bank account yet (developing countries) getting a means for money transactions. When all these people had smartphones/computers, of course the environmental load would get heavier.

Some of them spend more effort branding themselves as eco friendly than others do.

Yes, I have that impression, too. But maybe some of the efforts or "charity" these "coin organizations" have added to their coins have some real environmental impact and should not be underestimated?

I would be happy if the supporters or developers or promotors or marketing people of these coins came here and explained why their coins are as environmental friendly as they claim...