You’re comparing database to a trust-less distributed fault tolerant system. Of course the db has a smaller energy footprint but it doesn’t provide the same features. It’s like saying a bicycle rolls down the road just as well as a car so we should not use the car.

There are blockchains now that are designed to be optimal for what they provide.

The bigger issue is that there are applications running on chains that clearly don’t need the features of the chain.

I’m saying that for 95% of journeys currently done with cars, bicycles would be perfectly fine. I mean that both litterally and figuratively. More importantly, both for transport and for digital services, if we don’t switch to bicyles, there won’t be a planet to run those services for.

You are advocating for the end of the world as we know it within ten years.

I wouldn’t say the energy use of non-proof of work chains is millions of times worse than existing traditional finance and web2 solutions. Probably comparable. There is much energy wasted in the products themselves and knock-on effects. Machine learning for ads and analytics, for example. Banks using thousands of warm bodies to push around excel spreadsheets.

Google might build some of their data centers up in Iceland, but that’s not the full picture.

> I wouldn’t say the energy use of non-proof of work chains is millions of times worse than existing traditional finance and web2 solutions. Probably comparable.

Then you would not know what you are talking about.

> Google might build some of their data centers up in Iceland, but that’s not the full picture.

No, they have dozens of data centers, on every continent, and all of them are in areas with cheap, carbon-neutral supply. You think that you are being smart by being dismissive about their effort, and the effort of dozens of companies who host their own infrastructure, but that condescension and lack of expertise is just one more example of why Crypto advocates are so unconvincing.

Okay I have to concede the second point. Clearly I was feeling pretty flippant at the time.

Unsure about the former point.