this post was submitted on 04 Dec 2023
199 points (100.0% liked)

Technology

37799 readers
150 users here now

A nice place to discuss rumors, happenings, innovations, and challenges in the technology sphere. We also welcome discussions on the intersections of technology and society. If it’s technological news or discussion of technology, it probably belongs here.

Remember the overriding ethos on Beehaw: Be(e) Nice. Each user you encounter here is a person, and should be treated with kindness (even if they’re wrong, or use a Linux distro you don’t like). Personal attacks will not be tolerated.

Subcommunities on Beehaw:


This community's icon was made by Aaron Schneider, under the CC-BY-NC-SA 4.0 license.

founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] fosforus@sopuli.xyz 5 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

Ethereum transactions are claimed to use about 1-22 Wh per transaction. Not sure where the wide range comes from, but at least it's quite a lot better then Bitcoin's ~700-2000kWh per transaction. Ethereum is comparable to how much a credit card transaction is said to spend, although those figures only take into account power needed for their computer systems. Blockchain currencies replace a lot more infrastructure than just the computer systems, so I think it's reasonable to say that Eth2 is more energy efficient than credit cards.

That's not enough to make it a replacement for credit cards yet, but it's a good lowest of the low barriers to be crossed to qualify as a replacement.

In a few years, we'll probably be spending a huge amount of power for AI also, and there doesn't seem to be any Proof-of-Stake -like technology to help with that. Good times.