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From: Karl <gmkarl@gmail.com>
Date: Sun, 16 May 2021 18:05:44 -0400
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To: Bitcoin Protocol Discussion <bitcoin-dev@lists.linuxfoundation.org>
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Subject: Re: [bitcoin-dev] Proposal: Force to do nothing for first 9 minutes
 to save 90% of mining energy
Precedence: list

> 1. Has anyone considered that it might be technically not possible to com=
pletely 'power down' mining rigs during this 'cool-down' period of time? Wh=
ile modern CPUs have power-saving modes, I am not sure about ASICs used for=
 mining.

Sounds like a point to consider, note the economic pressure of course
so most people will find a way to power down.

> 2. I am not a huge data-center specialist, but it was my understanding th=
at they charge per unit of installed (maximum) electricity consumption. It =
would mean that if the miner needs X kilowatts-hour within that 1 minute wh=
en 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?

> (a) Environmental concerns cause Bitcoin to be less popular and thus push=
 the price lower, which in turn lowers miner's power consumption (lower Bit=
coin price =3D> less they can afford to spend on electricity). So it is a s=
elf-stabilizing system to begin with.

I like the idea but history shows that money outcompetes cute animals.

> (b) Crazy power consumption may be a temporary problem, after the number =
of halving events economic attractiveness of mining will decrease and power=
 consumption with it.

If hashrate flattens, the chain security situation changes too.

> 4. My counter-proposal to the community to address energy consumption pro=
blems would be to encourage users to allow only 'green miners' process thei=
r transaction. In particular:

This cool idea of providing a way for users to support different
miners with their transactions is not in conflict with reducing mining
time.  Both of these ideas are great ones; they are very different.

On 5/16/21, Zac Greenwood <zachgrw@gmail.com> wrote:
>> if energy is only expended for 10% of the same duration, this money must
> now be spent on hardware.
>
> More equipment obviously increases the total energy usage.

Are there people who can freely produce new mining equipment to an
arbitrary degree?  As I mentioned already and you didn't address, I
thought the supply was limited.

> For your proposal again this means that energy usage would not be likely =
to decrease appreciably, because large miners having access to near-free en=
ergy use the block-reward sized budget fully on equipment and other operati=
onal expenses.

Purchasing equipment with the same funds is unrelated to whether or
not the machines are running full blast during a theoretical 90%
downtime when a hash cannot succeed.  If their electricity is free,
they have no new funds to buy equipment with.

Additionally, you claim that all these people use renewable energy so
I don't know why they are being discussed at all.

> On the other hand, roughly every four years the coinbase reward halves, w=
hich does significantly lower the miner budget, at least in terms of BTC.

Adjusting that could be another good approach to influencing
properties of the chain.  I think there's another thread around it,
rather than this one.