Nostr notes by Anton Ragin [ARCHIVE]

📅 Original date posted:2021-05-23 📝 Original message:Well, ...

2023-06-07T22:53:56Z

In reply to nevent1q…ykwh
_________________________

📅 Original date posted:2021-05-23
📝 Original message:Well, it is done automatically every 4 years :) It is a self-balancing
system - more people shout about Bitcoin being dirty -> less adoption ->
lower the price -> less energy consumption. Add on top the fact that in
2024 block rewards will fall 50% anyway and someday it will be zero.

I am all for making Bitcoin green(er), but IMHO there shall be no
short-termism of the sort "Elon complained + price dropped 40% - lets go
radically change things".

IMHO if we want to make BTC cleaner we can add functionality where users
can prioritise some miners over the others, with the view that users will
prioritise "green" miners and they will get more TX fees, and there will be
economic incentive to go green.

On Sun, 23 May 2021, 09:49 James Lu via bitcoin-dev, <
bitcoin-dev at lists.linuxfoundation.org> wrote:

> Background
> ===
> Reducing the block reward reduces the incentive to mine. It reduces the
> maximum energy price at which mining is profitable, reducing the energy use.
>
> Bitcoins have value because they are accepted by full node users, from
> individual node operators, to exchanges and custodians like Coinbase.
> Anything else and the Bitcoins don't exist and are worthless. Like all
> currencies, Bitcoin has value because others recognize that they have value.
>
> Idea
> ===
> Reduce the block reward by adding fewer coins to the UTXO set per block.
> This should be done gradually
>
> Consensus layer
> ===
> This is a soft fork, because it tightens the
>
> Some Possible Weaknesses
> ===
> - It will cost less than a nation-state of energy to reverse recent
> Bitcoin transactions.
> - Some miners may protest and lobby exchanges.
> - By pushing mining towards the cheapest energy sources, centralization
> increases towards Chinese miners.
> - The Bitcoin network may split if consensus is not built before flag day.
>
> However, given the current political headwinds and widespread public
> discussion around Bitcoin's energy use, it may be socially possible to
> ask individual users and major exchanges to install a version of Bitcoin
> with a reduced block reward.
>
> Alternatives
> ===
> Instead of outright rejecting transactions (and the blocks that contain
> them) that attempt to spend increased block rewards, treat them as no-ops.
> _______________________________________________
> bitcoin-dev mailing list
> bitcoin-dev at lists.linuxfoundation.org
> https://lists.linuxfoundation.org/mailman/listinfo/bitcoin-dev
>
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📅 Original date posted:2021-05-17 📝 Original message:Hello, ...

2023-06-07T22:53:33Z

In reply to nevent1q…9d27
_________________________

📅 Original date posted:2021-05-17
📝 Original message:Hello, list

>Hello centralisation. Might as well just have someone sign miner keys, and
get
>rid of PoW entirely...
>No, it is not centralization -

No, it is not centralization, as:

(a) different miners could use different standards / certifications for
'green' status, there are many already;

>> That does not refute the claim at all. Just because you can choose from
multiple centralized authorities, which are well known and can collude, it
does not mean it is decentralized by any reasonable definition of the term.

(b) it does not affect stability of the network in a material way, rather
creates small (12.5% of revenue max) incentive to move to green sources of
energy (or buy carbon credits) and get certified - miners who would choose
to run dirty energy will still be able to do so.
and

>> Who is to issue these credits? A centralized entity I guess ... There is
no place for such in Bitcoin.

If I am to concede on the point that *voluntarily* green-status miner
certification is 'centralization', can you please explain *in detail* why
aren't 'bitcoin.org' and GitHub repo similar examples of 'centralization'?
You make a correct point that bitcoin.org and the GitHub repo are not
'official' things of Bitcoin network, however nowhere in my proposals on
green miner certification I was suggesting to introduce an 'official'
certificate for such a thing. May be I mis-formulated my ideas, in that
case I apologize:

The only thing which I suggested was to introduce an option to have some
transactions encrypted in the mempool to allow Bitcoin users some control
over who mines their transaction - full stop. Users could then decide how
to use this functionality themselves, and such functionality could have
uses way beyond 'green miners' - for example, some users might prefer to
send their transactions *directly to trusted miners* to prevent certain
quantum computer enabled attacks (e.g. when there is a window of
opportunity to steal coins if you have fast QC when you spend even from
p2phk address). Another example - if users are given some flexibility whom
to send the transactions, they might actually want to steer them away from
huge mining pools such as Antpool to support small independent miners, smth
of this sort - which actually would boost diversity in the network.

You may or may not agree that climate change is real, or may or may not
agree that Bitcoin energy consumption is a problem - I respectfully submit
it is not the right forum to find truth on these topics. We are discussing
ideas which *might *make Bitcoin a better solution for users who care about
certain things, *without *making it worse for somebody else (like you, for
example - who don't like centralization in any form).

>> (c) nothing is being proposed beyond what is already possible - Antpool
can go green today, and solicit users to send them signed transactions
directly instead of adding them to a public mempool, under the pretext that
it would make the transfer 'greener'.

>> And if there was an economic advantage in doing so, miners would quite
likely already implement that. Yet, somehow, they are not doing that.

Arguments of the sort 'if something could be done or should have been done
- it would be done already' are flawed, in my opinion, as following the
same logic nothing (including Bitcoin itself) should have been done ever.
As a matter of fact, we are working on a green miner initiative with
certain miners, having a call with Hut8 in 20 minutes myself - and I know
that we are not the only ones. Green crypto initiatives are actually
widespread, and the solutions will be popping up soon.

>> Please stop with the carbon credit nonsense. There is likely no such
thing to exist on a free market and no one is interested in these state
regulations.

Please read this Wikipedia Article:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carbon_offset

"There are two types of markets for carbon offsets, compliance and
*voluntary*" [emphasis added].

Voluntary carbon offset markets are actually growing really fast.

>> Just because a big company is controlled by people who do not understand
Bitcoin, it does not make the issue valid. There are no such environmental
concerns once you understand how Bitcoin and free market work. Don't help
to spread the FUD.

I respectfully submit that people who know how to launch rockets to the sky
and beam high-speed internet from the satellites to every place on earth
are at least capable of understanding how Bitcoin works. There is even an
english expression which reads 'it is not a rocket science' which I think
fits especially nicely in this particular case :)

>> Once people stop spreading FUD, the price will likely skyrocket. Start
with yourself please.

I guess you misinterpret my intentions, I think it doesn't matter what
Bitcoin price is - my personal interest is the widest possible adoption of
blockchain as a peer-to-peer way to transfer value between consenting
individuals free from government control or intervention. Environmental
concerns are real and at least some parts of the community are clearly
interested to at least discuss this matter (e.g. I am not the one who
started this thread).

Please don't be dismissive, it is an open forum and everybody is entitled
to his/her/its own opinion.
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📅 Original date posted:2021-05-17 📝 Original ...

2023-06-07T22:53:29Z

In reply to nevent1q…wztv
_________________________

📅 Original date posted:2021-05-17
📝 Original message:>> 2. I am not a huge data-center specialist, but it was my understanding
that they charge per unit of installed (maximum) electricity consumption.
It would mean that if the miner needs X kilowatts-hour within that 1 minute
when they are allowed to mine, he/she will have to pay for the same X for
the remaining 9 minutes - and as such would have no economic incentive not
to draw that power when idling.

>That sounds kind of exotic, could you take charge of checking to see
>how true it is?

I am pretty sure that is how it works in data centers absent 'special
deal', as we use some DCs in our business. However, after reading some
discussion on this thread it is pretty clear that some (maybe even
majority?) of miners have some sort of special deal on electricity - some
use 'spill over' electricity which would otherwise be wasted etc. This kind
of disproves my point, but not entirely - even 'special deal' electricity
is very unlikely to be available like water in the tap - you open it when
you need it, and pay for what you use only.

Variations in power consumption in the grid are very difficult to
compensate for:

(a) there is no efficient way to store electricity;
(b) some (majority?) power-generating assets are notoriously difficult to
throttle up and down - it takes almost a day in some cases to throttle down
power production on the nuclear power plant for example.

(did you know that sometimes the spot price for electricity goes below
zero, and consumers are being paid to consume - exactly because it is
cheaper to pay somebody to consume electricity than to switch off the
reactor?)

Because of this, an enormous spike in energy consumption every 1 minute in
10 is the worst possible load profile to any power grid, and would most
likely result in either miners or power grid infrastructure itself just
burning off peak energy during the 9 minutes 'cool-down' period.

>> 4. My counter-proposal to the community to address energy consumption
>> problems would be *to encourage users to allow only 'green miners'
process
>> their transaction.* In particular:
>>...
>> (b) Should there be some non-profit organization(s) certifying green
miners
>> and giving them cryptographic certificates of conformity (either usage of
>> green energy or purchase of offsets), users could encrypt their
>> transactions and submit to mempool in such a format that *only green
miners
>> would be able to decrypt and process them*.

>Hello centralisation. Might as well just have someone sign miner keys, and
get
>rid of PoW entirely...
>No, it is not centralization -

No, it is not centralization, as:

(a) different miners could use different standards / certifications for
'green' status, there are many already;
(b) it does not affect stability of the network in a material way, rather
creates small (12.5% of revenue max) incentive to move to green sources of
energy (or buy carbon credits) and get certified - miners who would choose
to run dirty energy will still be able to do so.
and
(c) nothing is being proposed beyond what is already possible - Antpool can
go green today, and solicit users to send them signed transactions directly
instead of adding them to a public mempool, under the pretext that it would
make the transfer 'greener'. What is being proposed is some community
effort to standardize & promote this approach, because if we manage to make
Bitcoin green(er) - we will remove what many commentators see as the last
barrier / biggest risk to even wider Bitcoin adoption.

Not to mention the fact that some aspects of the Bitcoin community are
pretty centralized already - 'www.bitcoin.org', GitHub repo, certain global
internet cables / protocols / providers. Centralization is evil only when
it enables (or makes significantly easier) a threatening attack on the
network, which does not appear to be the case. It is my personal opinion
only, though, I would respect it if someone disagrees.

On a separate note, I just want to draw everyone's attention to the fact
that - assuming if my calculations are correct - carbon credits to offset
dirty energy burned by miners would cost only *approx 5%* of block rewards
in USD terms max. On the other hand, BTC price has just collapsed 20%
because Tesla dropped their adoption citing environmental concerns. If
every miner on the planet agrees to go green or buy carbon credits, it will
actually be commercially beneficial to everybody, as the price will likely
skyrocket - the problem is that such situation absent community
coordination is not a Pareto-equilibrium state, which means that every
single miner is incentivised to break away from the commitment to the green
energy.

Maybe there is another solution to the problem, and huge mining pools need
to establish a 'green cartel' like OPEC and all start buying carbon credits
in order to make Bitcoin greener and more widely adopted for their own
benefit.

On Mon, May 17, 2021 at 3:58 AM Luke Dashjr <luke at dashjr.org> wrote:

> On Friday 14 May 2021 21:41:23 Michael Fuhrmann via bitcoin-dev wrote:
> > Bitcoin should create blocks every 10 minutes in average. So why do
> > miners need to mine the 9 minutes after the last block was found? It's
> > not necessary.
>
> It increases security, and is unavoidable anyway.
>
> > Problem: How to prevent "pre-mining" in the 9 minutes time window?
>
> You can't.
>
> > Possible ideas for discussion:
> >
> > - (maybe most difficult) global network timer sending a salted hash time
> > code after 9 minutes. this enables validation by nodes.
>
> PoW *is* the global network timer.
>
> > - (easy attempt) mining jobs before 9 minutes have a 10 (or 100 or just
> > high enough) times higher difficulty. so everyone can mine any time but
> > before to 9 minutes are up there will be a too high downside. It is more
> > efficient to wait then paying high bills. The bitcoin will get a "puls".
>
> There's no timestamp at this stage of consensus.
>
> On Sunday 16 May 2021 18:10:12 Karl via bitcoin-dev wrote:
> > The clock might be implementable on a peer network level by requiring
> > inclusion of a transaction that was broadcast after a 9 minute delay.
>
> That requires a centralised authority.
>
> On Sunday 16 May 2021 20:31:47 Anton Ragin via bitcoin-dev wrote:
> > 1. Has anyone considered that it might be technically not possible to
> > completely 'power down' mining rigs during this 'cool-down' period of
> time?
> > While modern CPUs have power-saving modes, I am not sure about ASICs used
> > for mining.
>
> That would be miners' problem, not the network's... New ASICs would no
> doubt
> be made to work more efficiently.
>
> > 2. I am not a huge data-center specialist, but it was my understanding
> that
> > they charge per unit of installed (maximum) electricity consumption. It
> > would mean that if the miner needs X kilowatts-hour within that 1 minute
> > when they are allowed to mine, he/she will have to pay for the same X for
> > the remaining 9 minutes - and as such would have no economic incentive
> not
> > to draw that power when idling.
>
> Actually, this would be a good thing: it would heavily discourage
> datacentre
> use (which is very harmful to mining decentralisation).
>
> > 4. My counter-proposal to the community to address energy consumption
> > problems would be *to encourage users to allow only 'green miners'
> process
> > their transaction.* In particular:
> >...
> > (b) Should there be some non-profit organization(s) certifying green
> miners
> > and giving them cryptographic certificates of conformity (either usage of
> > green energy or purchase of offsets), users could encrypt their
> > transactions and submit to mempool in such a format that *only green
> miners
> > would be able to decrypt and process them*.
>
> Hello centralisation. Might as well just have someone sign miner keys, and
> get
> rid of PoW entirely...
>
>
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