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by swalsh 394 days ago
A tired old debate devoid of facts. The chains I advocated for are proof of stake, and AI is a useful system worth the energy it uses. Should we not consume energy at all?
3 comments

You've stated you're tired in several threads. Maybe you should take a break from the internet for a few minutes?
I highly doubt that the majority things AI is used for is useful.

I see lots of spam videos, pictures and texts that flood insta, Youtube etc. to monetize on ad revenue or simply scam people.

I think cryptocurrency aren’t any better if you compare legit uses vs criminal ones.

> Should we not consume energy at all?

No need for a strawman. Prevention of wasteful use doesn’t mean no use at all.

> A tired old debate devoid of facts.

You are advocating for more fucking cryptocurrency.

You don't get to ignore any response as "a tired old debate devoid of facts".

He wasn't ignoring anything, he was pointing out that that criticism is based on outdated information. Almost all modern blockchain designs (from the past ~10 years) do not promote energy waste via PoW.

It's fine to point out the energy waste of more traditional PoW chains (particularly Bitcoin, which accounts for the bulk of PoW), but to frame that as a problem with blockchains in general is misguided.

PoS is sort of hard to bootstrap. ETH moved to it which was quite an achievement, but it’s difficult to see how it might have started that way.

If Bitcoin fails then it seems to me the bottom will fall out of all of crypto So all of it still depends on PoW propping up BTC.

I wouldn't say there any major technical hurdles to bootstrapping PoS, the project just has to decide where the initial tokens should go - insiders, ICO, airdrops, etc. Many modern chains have been PoS from the start, like Cardano, Solana, Algorand, Avalanche, NEAR, etc.

Or do you mean in the sense that (some argue) the most fair way to do an initial token distribution is PoW with no premine?

A problem of cryptocurrencies. Blockchains are useful and need less power.

Bitcoin is still the biggest player in the cryptocurrency world, so still a lot of wasted energy.