Relevant: The Only Social Network Built On Trust

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Got to regret minting this babe early on: [https://foundation.app/0xa8b484814de1cc58f89fce9d4490405dac1e2cd5/the-dreamlings-swing-3428](https://foundation.app/0xa8b484814de1cc58f89fce9d4490405dac1e2cd5/the-dreamlings-swing-3428) “The only viable option is total moral rejection. There is no “my rig is solar” or “we plant a tree for every coin” or “we’re moving to proof of stake” or “we have a bounty for a less devastating NFT” or “my smart contract is a viable alternative”. This is liberalism at its finest- a reformist attitude that thinks if we can just fix the worst problems- remove the bad apples- get some better regulatory structures in place- then the system might just work rather than internalizing that a system based on fundamentally broken, greedy, hyper-capitalist models is one that will always produce harm.”

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crossQt

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@crosslucid • 3 Years Ago

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Got to regret minting this babe early on: [https://foundation.app/0xa8b484814de1cc58f89fce9d4490405dac1e2cd5/the-dreamlings-swing-3428](https://foundation.app/0xa8b484814de1cc58f89fce9d4490405dac1e2cd5/the-dreamlings-swing-3428) “The only viable option is total moral rejection. There is no “my rig is solar” or “we plant a tree for every coin” or “we’re moving to proof of stake” or “we have a bounty for a less devastating NFT” or “my smart contract is a viable alternative”. This is liberalism at its finest- a reformist attitude that thinks if we can just fix the worst problems- remove the bad apples- get some better regulatory structures in place- then the system might just work rather than internalizing that a system based on fundamentally broken, greedy, hyper-capitalist models is one that will always produce harm.”

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MathewBog

@MathewBog • 3 Years Ago

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To all of those who are writing about the environmental impacts of crypto art and NFT's: If you look at where the technology is going, there is very little environmental impact to "crypto art" if you use the right platform. I completely respect Everest and others writing about the problems of using the Proof of Work based blockchain. However there are plenty of platforms that use Proof of Stake which does not involve crypto mining on GPU's. It takes no more energy than to post on facebook. PoS crypto has an interesting space to explore outside of capitalist aspirations. The Stellar blockchain and Harmony blockchain are both excellent places to begin exploring NFTs without relying on environmentally impactful practices. In other words, the technology is super interesting and SHOULD have artists exploring the boundaries of this form, not just tech bros.

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MathewBog

@MathewBog • 3 Years Ago

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To all of those who are writing about the environmental impacts of crypto art and NFT's: If you look at where the technology is going, there is very little environmental impact to "crypto art" if you use the right platform. I completely respect Everest and others writing about the problems of using the Proof of Work based blockchain. However there are plenty of platforms that use Proof of Stake which does not involve crypto mining on GPU's. It takes no more energy than to post on facebook. PoS crypto has an interesting space to explore outside of capitalist aspirations. The Stellar blockchain and Harmony blockchain are both excellent places to begin exploring NFTs without relying on environmentally impactful practices. In other words, the technology is super interesting and SHOULD have artists exploring the boundaries of this form, not just tech bros.

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santenar

@santenar • 3 Years Ago

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The article makes a lot of great points and not just about NFT. It describes the very nature of any currency! Take USD, gold or cigarettes: Everything is only worth what you need to waste in order to produce it and keep producing it. This waste can be electricity or carrots eaten while working on a farm. What is called "wasted energy" here is called "productivity" for other currencies.

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santenar

@santenar • 3 Years Ago

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The article makes a lot of great points and not just about NFT. It describes the very nature of any currency! Take USD, gold or cigarettes: Everything is only worth what you need to waste in order to produce it and keep producing it. This waste can be electricity or carrots eaten while working on a farm. What is called "wasted energy" here is called "productivity" for other currencies.

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stiphen_coul

@stiphen_coul • 3 Years Ago

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AFAIK Mining as well as transfers of the "coins" is wasteful, because during both actions your client has to access the "distributed ledger", ie. contacts as many other clients as possible in order to "inform" them of the mining/transfer having taken place. Somebody once compared crypto to shouting in a dark room. The more people there are in the room, the more shouting there is.

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stiphen_coul

@stiphen_coul • 3 Years Ago

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AFAIK Mining as well as transfers of the "coins" is wasteful, because during both actions your client has to access the "distributed ledger", ie. contacts as many other clients as possible in order to "inform" them of the mining/transfer having taken place. Somebody once compared crypto to shouting in a dark room. The more people there are in the room, the more shouting there is.

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Mechlaneghan

@Mechlaneghan • 3 Years Ago

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But that doesn't really get to the heart of why crypto consumes so much electricity. It's true that every time a transaction is made it gets propagated throughout the network. However, these transactions only take up a little bit of data since they only really have to include information like the sender address, receiver address, amount sent, and other values. It’s like downloading a file online: if you’re streaming a movie, you don’t think about how much electricity your router is using. (For perspective, the Bitcoin blockchain, the full list of every transaction ever sent, is around 330 GB.) Mining specifically is where most of the energy is used up. Without going into too much technical detail, when Bitcoin was originally drawn up it was decided that a reasonable method to verify transactions on the network would be to essentially run a number guessing game. If a correct guess is made then (a) the recent transactions would all be verified and (b) the miner would receive the transaction fees from all the transactions they verified (along with newly generated currency as a bonus).1 When this happens, it is said that a new block has been found and the block is added to the blockchain. It was made like this because it was believed to make Bitcoin resistant to attacks: anyone who wanted to verify fake transactions would need to have more computing power than the entire rest of the network. Therefore, it’s clear why mining causes so much electricity to be used up: more computing power means more capacity to guess numbers, and more guesses means more money.

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Mechlaneghan

@Mechlaneghan • 3 Years Ago

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But that doesn't really get to the heart of why crypto consumes so much electricity. It's true that every time a transaction is made it gets propagated throughout the network. However, these transactions only take up a little bit of data since they only really have to include information like the sender address, receiver address, amount sent, and other values. It’s like downloading a file online: if you’re streaming a movie, you don’t think about how much electricity your router is using. (For perspective, the Bitcoin blockchain, the full list of every transaction ever sent, is around 330 GB.) Mining specifically is where most of the energy is used up. Without going into too much technical detail, when Bitcoin was originally drawn up it was decided that a reasonable method to verify transactions on the network would be to essentially run a number guessing game. If a correct guess is made then (a) the recent transactions would all be verified and (b) the miner would receive the transaction fees from all the transactions they verified (along with newly generated currency as a bonus).1 When this happens, it is said that a new block has been found and the block is added to the blockchain. It was made like this because it was believed to make Bitcoin resistant to attacks: anyone who wanted to verify fake transactions would need to have more computing power than the entire rest of the network. Therefore, it’s clear why mining causes so much electricity to be used up: more computing power means more capacity to guess numbers, and more guesses means more money.

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