Which is the most environmentally friendly, energy-efficient altcoin?

[Hubus]

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).

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[Daedelus]

Peerexplorer.com gives an estimate of the cost of Nxt's network per day on the front page, currently

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.

[Hubus]

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:

"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.

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

[vipgelsi]

Solarcoin once it switches to Pos

[EvilDave]

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:

"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.

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.

[Hubus]

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...

[Hubus]

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.

[Hubus]

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.

[Hubus]

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.

[Hubus]

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/

[Enzyme]

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.

[mczarnek]

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.

[Hubus]

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) 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.

[HalFinneysBrain]

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.

[Hubus]

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...