A few days ago I posted about how Mozilla accepting cryptocurrency had created a stir, Mozilla has listened to people’s responses and is halting cryptocurrency donations until they review the current state of crypto to see if it is in line with their stance on the climate. They have said they will have an open and transparent process involving this.

Archive: https://archive.md/yTrel

  • ganymede@lemmy.ml
    1·
    3 years ago

    not quite sure what you mean? the carbon footprint of a transaction is tiny in comparison to mining no?

    • thoughtcrime@lemmy.ml
      2·
      3 years ago

      Mining is the process of creating new coins, but these new coins are created when you add a transaction to the public ledger. You cannot dissociate mining from transactions, mining is in fact how the networks’s keepers are paid for maintaining the network and processing transactions. It is this way because it was supposed that BitCoin transactions would be free, but now you are almost always required to pay a fee to get miners interested in adding you to the block

      • ganymede@lemmy.ml
        1·
        3 years ago

        do you actually need to form a new block to computationally verify a transaction?

        i thought reaching consensus is the most expensive/wasteful part, rather than the actual computational operations required to verify any given transaction?

        yes that transaction will contribute a minute fraction of a percentage to the carbon cost of the next (and arguably subsequent) block(s). but in that sense, and considering the increased per-block carbon footprint of mining each new block, is it really the case that eg. a “worthy” transaction which makes use of previously spent carbon isn’t at least making something of worth happen as a result of that carbon which has already been spent?

        or is it really the case that the substantial carbon cost which has already been poured into eg. btc can never do ANY good at all? if so what would be an advised recovery plan to make sure the previously spent carbon doesn’t go to waste? basically develop a truly green currency and transfer the ‘worth’ of BTC to it at 1:1? or any other ways to do it? i’m just thinking out loud here…