Relatively new to crypto. Got a loose understanding of the systems.
Trying to differentiate the two but I’m kinda stuck on something. I understand that mining is more energy intensive, as they’re using mining rigs to process transactions.
My confusion stems from how that differs from POS where you still end up using a computer to process transactions. There just happens to be an extra step (32ETH). Which, I guess I should ask just to be sure - are those 32 ETH just parked somewhere as collateral or is it used as part of a liquidity pool?
Of course penalties keep validators in line, but wouldn’t that imply that btc miners have the capability to misbehave in a similar manner to a bad validator (even though they have no stake)?
To me the two methods seem nearly identical. What am I missing ?
The difference is that if you do not habe the 32 -ETH deposit, everyone can run as many validators as they like. That is only limited by hardware costs short term and power consumption long term.
And that is what happens. Bitcoin mints at the moment 6.25 BTC per 10 minutes - that is 2466.25*35.000$=31,500,000 $ per day that miners can burn for operational costs (mostly power) before they become unprofitable.
Ethereum has 800k validators, but even if you have a single validator on a PC, that only costs a few cents per day to operate (example: 10Watts * 24h= 240Wh=0,24kWh -> maybe 2kWh per week, much lower if you run multiple validators).