The benefit of PoW is that it is tied to real world physics and markets.
Eh… physics in the sense that faster processing means faster processing but it’s a very wasteful process. It’s like ordering a meal from hotel room service and having 100s of people bring you what you ordered. Proof-of-work-wasted.
The price of bitcoin is derived from the price of electricity, computing power and the supply.
There’s a huge part of PoW that is left up to chance. Individual miners will spend lots of money on an expensive rig and get pennies. Some miners will join mining pools to split the wins but those generally are shared according to your computing power, so pennies. Pennies and unless you’re doing things right, huge electric bills. Hell, even death in some cases. There’s a chubbyemu video about a kid who ran too many miners in his room, which got too hot and he suffered heatstroke.
PoW was great to begin with, but it is the reason why crypto has such a large carbon footprint.
PoS is tied to the price of what the owners of the coins will sell them for and who wants them,
Can you elaborate? I think you (or maybe I) am misunderstanding how PoS is priced. From what I understood, it was loosely tied to bitcoin (because investors will diversify into both coins and bitcoin has much more volume / market cap). As I understand, all cryptos are priced at what a buyer would pay for it. It’s not like BTC miners can ask for more money because the price of electricity went up. I don’t think 1 BTC would sell for $1,000,000 USD in 2024 just because it was scheduled to do so. If a competitor to BTC came out and was better (e.g., SEI) I think that would affect BTC’s price. I don’t see how ETH would be any different.
Proof of Stake at the end of the day is just saying “instead of joining a mining pool and paying my electricity and hardware to do a lot of wasteful work, I’ll instead pick another entity to do the mining for me and give me a share of the profits”. Proof of Stake is still Proof of Work, it’s just sort of a curated proof-of-work where the network picks one machine at random to do the work (depending on the amount staked with / trusted in that machine and the administrator of that machine). It works well enough to provide an estimated APY in lots of cases, which isn’t something you can get from Proof of Work mining BTC.
Physics in a sense of the current limits of computing and energy generation are based on physics. If I come up with a faster computer I get paid more and I also further secure the network. It’s a way to insure against technology advancing enough to break the network. If I come up with free electricity I only have to worry about the cost of compute. And bitcoin miners can and do ask for more money if the price of electricity goes up. They do this by holding onto mined coins for longer creating a supply shortage. The big exchanges often get their liquidity pools from miners so if the miners don’t sell they have to pay a higher price set by the market. And finally if PoW is so bad why do you admit that the price of PoS is tied to it? If bitcoin went PoS its fundamentals would collapse and most of the crypto market along with it.
Physics in a sense of the current limits of computing and energy generation are based on physics.
Moore’s law, sure. The same goes for Proof-of-Stake.
If I come up with a faster computer I get paid more and I also further secure the network.
If you come up with a faster ASICs miner you get paid more, sure. I won’t knock BTC mining for aspiring electronics engineers. Get that coin, baby!
It’s a way to insure against technology advancing enough to break the network.
But you having a faster computer means you get paid more, which means you would be advancing the technology.
If I come up with free electricity I only have to worry about the cost of compute.
Electricity is not without costs. Solar panels, hydro generating equipment, the cost of copper wire and magnets, the cost to maintain the equipment, batteries, etc… But yes, if you optimize for paying a low amount of electricty you end up only needing to worry about maintaining your mining hardware.
And bitcoin miners can and do ask for more money if the price of electricity goes up.
Well, they don’t ask…
They do this by holding onto mined coins for longer creating a supply shortage.
…they HODL, right? Same thing anyone who owns coin would do if they wanted the price to go up.
The big exchanges often get their liquidity pools from miners so if the miners don’t sell they have to pay a higher price set by the market.
Supply and demand.
And finally if PoW is so bad why do you admit that the price of PoS is tied to it?
Because BTC owners swap coins between ETH (and all other eth tokens) and BTC? Because more ETH is bought with BTC than it is with fiat money? I’m no expert, I’m just making guesses here but it seems to me if a bunch of kids got rich because they mined or bought BTC early on, some of they might want to diversify into ETH and all other tokens?
Any ties between BTC and ETH are purely market related. They have no bearing on Proof of Work or Proof of Stake.
If bitcoin went PoS its fundamentals would collapse and most of the crypto market along with it.
Bitcoins price is derived from the cost of compute, energy and a finite supply. These are the fundamentals of bitcoin. Just like the price of gold is set mostly by the cost of machinery, energy and labour to pull it out of the ground and then the extra cost of maintaining or protecting the gold reserves, there’s also a finite supply. Bitcoin going PoS would be a bit like the current gold system saying we’re not going to take it out of the ground any more but instead we’re going to say who ever owns the current stockpile gets an imaginary credit for more gold. Any new gold entering into circulation will only be in the form of gold contracts.
Proof of Stake at the end of the day is just saying “instead of joining a mining pool and paying my electricity and hardware to do a lot of wasteful work, I’ll instead pick another entity to do the mining for me and give me a share of the profits”. Proof of Stake is still Proof of Work,
It’s literally not this. Proof-of-stake is basically saying “I’m allowed to author the next block because some math formula says a coin I hold is eligible to do this, and here’s a signature proving I own the coin”. It’s not proof-of-work, it’s proof-of-ownership.
Eh… physics in the sense that faster processing means faster processing but it’s a very wasteful process. It’s like ordering a meal from hotel room service and having 100s of people bring you what you ordered. Proof-of-work-wasted.
There’s a huge part of PoW that is left up to chance. Individual miners will spend lots of money on an expensive rig and get pennies. Some miners will join mining pools to split the wins but those generally are shared according to your computing power, so pennies. Pennies and unless you’re doing things right, huge electric bills. Hell, even death in some cases. There’s a chubbyemu video about a kid who ran too many miners in his room, which got too hot and he suffered heatstroke.
PoW was great to begin with, but it is the reason why crypto has such a large carbon footprint.
Can you elaborate? I think you (or maybe I) am misunderstanding how PoS is priced. From what I understood, it was loosely tied to bitcoin (because investors will diversify into both coins and bitcoin has much more volume / market cap). As I understand, all cryptos are priced at what a buyer would pay for it. It’s not like BTC miners can ask for more money because the price of electricity went up. I don’t think 1 BTC would sell for $1,000,000 USD in 2024 just because it was scheduled to do so. If a competitor to BTC came out and was better (e.g., SEI) I think that would affect BTC’s price. I don’t see how ETH would be any different.
Proof of Stake at the end of the day is just saying “instead of joining a mining pool and paying my electricity and hardware to do a lot of wasteful work, I’ll instead pick another entity to do the mining for me and give me a share of the profits”. Proof of Stake is still Proof of Work, it’s just sort of a curated proof-of-work where the network picks one machine at random to do the work (depending on the amount staked with / trusted in that machine and the administrator of that machine). It works well enough to provide an estimated APY in lots of cases, which isn’t something you can get from Proof of Work mining BTC.
Physics in a sense of the current limits of computing and energy generation are based on physics. If I come up with a faster computer I get paid more and I also further secure the network. It’s a way to insure against technology advancing enough to break the network. If I come up with free electricity I only have to worry about the cost of compute. And bitcoin miners can and do ask for more money if the price of electricity goes up. They do this by holding onto mined coins for longer creating a supply shortage. The big exchanges often get their liquidity pools from miners so if the miners don’t sell they have to pay a higher price set by the market. And finally if PoW is so bad why do you admit that the price of PoS is tied to it? If bitcoin went PoS its fundamentals would collapse and most of the crypto market along with it.
Moore’s law, sure. The same goes for Proof-of-Stake.
If you come up with a faster ASICs miner you get paid more, sure. I won’t knock BTC mining for aspiring electronics engineers. Get that coin, baby!
But you having a faster computer means you get paid more, which means you would be advancing the technology.
Electricity is not without costs. Solar panels, hydro generating equipment, the cost of copper wire and magnets, the cost to maintain the equipment, batteries, etc… But yes, if you optimize for paying a low amount of electricty you end up only needing to worry about maintaining your mining hardware.
Well, they don’t ask…
…they HODL, right? Same thing anyone who owns coin would do if they wanted the price to go up.
Supply and demand.
Because BTC owners swap coins between ETH (and all other eth tokens) and BTC? Because more ETH is bought with BTC than it is with fiat money? I’m no expert, I’m just making guesses here but it seems to me if a bunch of kids got rich because they mined or bought BTC early on, some of they might want to diversify into ETH and all other tokens?
Any ties between BTC and ETH are purely market related. They have no bearing on Proof of Work or Proof of Stake.
How so?
Bitcoins price is derived from the cost of compute, energy and a finite supply. These are the fundamentals of bitcoin. Just like the price of gold is set mostly by the cost of machinery, energy and labour to pull it out of the ground and then the extra cost of maintaining or protecting the gold reserves, there’s also a finite supply. Bitcoin going PoS would be a bit like the current gold system saying we’re not going to take it out of the ground any more but instead we’re going to say who ever owns the current stockpile gets an imaginary credit for more gold. Any new gold entering into circulation will only be in the form of gold contracts.
PoW / PoS has no effect on how finite a crypto’s coins are.
I know. It’s one of the fundamentals of bitcoin though and that’s what we were talking about
Also fundamental to ETH mining.
It’s literally not this. Proof-of-stake is basically saying “I’m allowed to author the next block because some math formula says a coin I hold is eligible to do this, and here’s a signature proving I own the coin”. It’s not proof-of-work, it’s proof-of-ownership.