Is there any research being done to make the blockchain less energy consuming?

[Borilla]

because i have a consciousness and many hesitant adopters too

because economically  btc transactions cost way more in electricity than their fees and btc owners pay them all indirectly

sorry I thought all these were obvious

Re: "Consciousness" - It's probably better to leave religious beliefs or politics out of the Development & Technical sub-forum, that would be off-topic.


Re: the costs of producing a block - you've misunderstood the economics.

The fees don't pay for the block reward, the miners are incurring the electricity costs in order to profitably mine the block reward + transaction fees (profiting from transaction fees is in most respects out of the miner's control). The vast majority of the electricity used to solve a block must (at this stage of the block subsidy decrement schedule) be comparable to the market price of the block reward in order for it to be profitable for the miner. The miner cannot continue mining if they pay more to mine the block reward than the block reward can be sold for. The transaction fees are a largely insubstantial part of how a miner evaluates profitable operation, as fees are a small proportion of the block reward's BTC value.

Do you have a different economic model in mind?

you are missing all the points and confuse things
my question was clear and i will remain on the subject

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[Borilla]

There could be several possibilities on how we could solve the energy crisis of miners. I'm guessing you might have taken a hint from China planning to charge premium prices for Bitcoin miners, or to have their power sources cut down. This could be all because of the extreme amount of power being consumed for mining, which could otherwise be used for powering rural households generated by hydroelectricity.

With Proof of Work and current hardware available out there, it's very competitive and only the top performing hardware wins the block mining battle. Hence, it becomes necessary that ASIC chip manufactuters focus on reducing power consumption of these chips while retaining performance if at all we want to reduce power consumption. For instant just one of the T9's and the S9's easily alone draw about 1400 Watts of electricity which is too much. Thus it's all a matter of competition building up for ASIC chip manufacturers for Bitcoin mining, and then we'll see a lot of innovation in this area and soon probably low power consuming miners.

There are other algorithms that most altcoins are planning to switch to or have already been running on, such as Proof of stake which risks centralization and power in the hands of those having the high stake of funds, which would obvious make the rich richer. So I'm honestly not expecting the logical thinkers to be a great fan of this.

Cheaper and better hashpower will increase block difficulty, you reach an equilibrium between total hashpower, costs, fees etc... that might even not benefits anybody in term of gain and might not decrease total consumption.

Anyway, my question was about possible futur plans or research being  currently done  to implement this PoW 

[Ucy]

Hope the energy thing doesn't drive miners into guilt and force them to come up with strange ideas in the name of mining with little or no energy.

I kind of see mining as the engine room of Bitcoin network where difficult problems are solved and new Bitcoins are created. Engine rooms/factories typically require heavy work and consume lots of energy.
Maybe one day someone with lots of time will help calculate the Amount of energy used by Oil Companies, Phone manufacturers, Facebook, Bitcoin Network, in relation to the X amount of profits they make per month. This will help determine the true nature of energy consumption by companies in comparison to the that of Bitcoin Network.

[Kakmakr]

You haven't explained why energy consumption is such a problem for you.

because i have a consciousness and many hesitant adopters too

because economically  btc transactions cost way more in electricity than their fees and btc owners pay them all indirectly

sorry I thought all these were obvious

Many of these "hesitant adopters" are being brainwashed by mainstream media. Have they ever considered how much electricity are being used by PayPal or Credit card companies and even Banks, compared to Bitcoin. Here we are not just talking about the electricity to hash or process the transactions.

These companies will quickly respond to media queries and tell them that their mainframes are only using a fraction of the processing power than what BTC is using, but they do not include the hidden "operating" cost. They have several offices and these offices have air-conditioning and lightning and lifts and coffee machines and photo copiers and printers and computers and I can go on and on.  < Compare that to some of these mining farms, where they have one or two buildings with 3 to 5 people running the operation >

If you want to compare, then you have to compare Apples with Apples. ^smile^

[wiebemarten]

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You haven't explained why energy consumption is such a problem for you.

because i have a consciousness and many hesitant adopters too

because economically  btc transactions cost way more in electricity than their fees and btc owners pay them all indirectly

sorry I thought all these were obvious

Many of these "hesitant adopters" are being brainwashed by mainstream media. Have they ever considered how much electricity are being used by PayPal or Credit card companies and even Banks, compared to Bitcoin. Here we are not just talking about the electricity to hash or process the transactions.

These companies will quickly respond to media queries and tell them that their mainframes are only using a fraction of the processing power than what BTC is using, but they do not include the hidden "operating" cost. They have several offices and these offices have air-conditioning and lightning and lifts and coffee machines and photo copiers and printers and computers and I can go on and on.  < Compare that to some of these mining farms, where they have one or two buildings with 3 to 5 people running the operation >

If you want to compare, then you have to compare Apples with Apples. ^smile^

The Bitcoin blockchain currently consumes more energy than the total consumption of the state of Ireland. The total energy consumption of even a concern-size company, even including energy consumers like airconditioning, heating, lifts, coffee machines and photocopiers, will be FAR below this.

~Wiebe-Marten


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[rayymat]

research is being carried out every time and second

[Borilla]

^smile^

keep smiling because you're funny

[Kakmakr]

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You haven't explained why energy consumption is such a problem for you.

because i have a consciousness and many hesitant adopters too

because economically  btc transactions cost way more in electricity than their fees and btc owners pay them all indirectly

sorry I thought all these were obvious

Many of these "hesitant adopters" are being brainwashed by mainstream media. Have they ever considered how much electricity are being used by PayPal or Credit card companies and even Banks, compared to Bitcoin. Here we are not just talking about the electricity to hash or process the transactions.

These companies will quickly respond to media queries and tell them that their mainframes are only using a fraction of the processing power than what BTC is using, but they do not include the hidden "operating" cost. They have several offices and these offices have air-conditioning and lightning and lifts and coffee machines and photo copiers and printers and computers and I can go on and on.  < Compare that to some of these mining farms, where they have one or two buildings with 3 to 5 people running the operation >

If you want to compare, then you have to compare Apples with Apples. ^smile^

The Bitcoin blockchain currently consumes more energy than the total consumption of the state of Ireland. The total energy consumption of even a concern-size company, even including energy consumers like airconditioning, heating, lifts, coffee machines and photocopiers, will be FAR below this.

~Wiebe-Marten


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Remember Bitcoin is the alternative to many companies < PayPal / Banks / Master Card / VISA / Western Union / MoneyGram > so you have to take into account their combined electricity consumption, compared to Bitcoin operations. The idea is to replace them with a improved alternative. <Cheaper & Faster & more secure>

All of these companies have branches in every city and town. <globally>

How much electricity are used to manufacture fiat currencies? < Mining the resources and creating coins & paper money? and how many trees are cut down to manufacture the paper they use in these offices > 

How much surplus electricity are generated globally? <currently going to waste?> Example : https://www.qewc.com/qewc/en/index.php/qewc/77-gulf-times/105-2700mw-of-surplus-electricity-produced

[Carlton Banks]

How much surplus electricity are generated globally? <currently going to waste?> Example : https://www.qewc.com/qewc/en/index.php/qewc/77-gulf-times/105-2700mw-of-surplus-electricity-produced

Exactly, Bitcoin mining is commonplace in regions where electricity surpluses (and correspondingly cheap prices) exist.


However, the overriding point here is simple:

Blockchains use energy for hashing. More hashpower is better than less, because it's more secure.



Sorry OP, but that's the end of your thread. If you want to do it a different way, go right ahead, but asserting everyone is wrong without providing any reasoning is a one-way ticket to creating your own cryptocurrency that subscribes to your vision.

[Boussac]

Decentralization of mining looks like a promising track for R&D: if heaters become computers and people start mining from home,  part of the energy consumed by hash computation will be recycled.
However, censorship resistance stems from the thermodynamic barrier to update the blockchain.
This kind of optimization would actually weaken censorship resistance.

[Borilla]

blablabla

you have to compare energy per transaction

[akd_dadi]

Some people think PoS is the answer, as it will provide confirmations with no extra energy consumptions.

I would argue that energy consumption is a feature, not a bug. That it is necessary and that if a blockchain isn't PoW, it isn't a blockchain.
Energy consumption required to solve cryptographic puzzles on Bitcoin blockchain is what ties the technology to the real world.
It is what gives people an identity, it is what stops spamming and gives people an incentive to reach a consensus.

If you don't consume extra energy that serves no other purpose, then you don't have physical incentives to reach a consensus.
You don't spend energy on a vote, which means there might be no real person behind such a vote.

Energy consumption is the only reasonable way to tie physical to virtual, but either way, a certain physical consumption is necessary to insure physical beings are controlling a virtual currency.

Perhaps what we need is to make use of the power consumption...by mining with our heaters.

[Carlton Banks]

if heaters become computers and people start mining from home,  part of the energy consumed by hash computation will be recycled.

Oh that's not allowed in this thread, you can't use energy to do something useful under any circumstances! Cold people must run on the spot wearing heavy clothes, or move to a warmer region of the world! (energy cannot be used to move there of course, using energy is bad!)

[llama_rider]

At market equilibrium, the expected benefit (revenue) from Bitcoin and other PoW mining would be roughly equal to the expected cost (including electric power cost).

A downside to proof-of-stake systems is that it is a "rich get richer" system: Only people who already have a lot of the currency have a decent chance of getting a block reward of more currency.  PoW is more egalitarian: Anyone can buy a mining rig, and they don't need to compete proportional to the currency holdings of whales but only proportional to their investment in mining (hardware + electricity).

[Borilla]

At market equilibrium, the expected benefit (revenue) from Bitcoin and other PoW mining would be roughly equal to the expected cost (including electric power cost).

A downside to proof-of-stake systems is that it is a "rich get richer" system: Only people who already have a lot of the currency have a decent chance of getting a block reward of more currency.  PoW is more egalitarian: Anyone can buy a mining rig, and they don't need to compete proportional to the currency holdings of whales but only proportional to their investment in mining (hardware + electricity).

if it was true then less people would put their coins at stake  and it would become more profitable

[leepfrog]

The reality is that we are probably stuck with energy-guzzling cryptocurrencies, at least for a while. In the meantime, maybe true believers would be wise to invest their digital coins in renewable electricity sources.

The one in the best position to supplant proof of work is called “proof of stake.” Whereas proof of work rewards participants for spending computational resources, blockchains that use proof of stake would select validators based in part on the size of their respective monetary deposits—their stake. This would be massively more energy efficient, but the concept is still unproven at a large scale and has a number of kinks that need working out.

[Euro1000]

The funny thing is that a single bitcoin transaction can roughly devour 5,000 times more than a typical credit card payment.

With "Devour" you mean devour energy, yes? Do you have a link for this number 5,000 times?

It would be interesting to learn how much energy is spent for FIAT, incl. producing bills, transportation to ATM, production of ATMs, heating for offices of banks etc.

[Samarkand]

...

It would be interesting to learn how much energy is spent for FIAT, incl. producing bills, transportation to ATM, production of ATMs, heating for offices of banks etc.

The statistic that you are looking for is probably not available, because the energy costs are occurring at too many different levels of
the system. However, the total costs in terms of money are published by the European Central Bank.

According to the ECB the total cost of fiat money production, fiat money storage and fiat money transportation are
roughly 1 % of the total economic output of the European union each year, which equates to roughly 140 billion € at the moment.

However, even if Bitcoin mining is more energy intensive the enormous benefits (an asset that has properties of sound money) are preferable
to our current monetary system.

[Carlton Banks]

The one in the best position to supplant proof of work is called “proof of stake.”

It is still possible to reduce this huge energy consumption by adopting proof-of-stake algorithm where coin owners create blocks rather than miners instead of proof-of-work.

It's unlikely that you could convince Bitcoiners to fork to PoS.

But even if you could, this is a genuinely free market; some Bitcoiners would reject a proof-of-stake fork regardless of how convincing anyone's PoS rhetoric is. And because this is a market for cryptocurrencies, and because no PoS design has been shown to compete with PoW, we'd be right back where we are now really.

[Euro1000]

According to the ECB the total cost of fiat money production, fiat money storage and fiat money transportation are
roughly 1 % of the total economic output of the European union each year, which equates to roughly 140 billion € at the moment.

Thank you for this.

So, for this part of FIAT (only for EUR) they (or we?) pay 1.4 bln €

According to https://digiconomist.net/bitcoin-energy-consumption the global mining costs are $1.433 bln USD.

I know you cannot compare costs with energy directly but if you take into account that we talking about only a part of the FIAT energy costs and this only for EUR, it could turn out that BTC uses less energy than FIAT ...