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Ask HN: Hetzner dedicated and crypto – what have you been told is allowed?

11 points by delhanty ↗ HN
Today I was told by Hetzner support that they do not allow any crypto applications.

This was in the context of my dedicated server - not cloud.

First, I asked whether I could run a non-mining Ethereum node. The answer was no.

Then I asked:

>How about if I sync one copy of the Ethereum block chain (about 350 GB of data) to my server without allowing it to be publicly accessible - is that allowed?

and also whether they allow crypto applications at all. Hetzner support answered

> Dear ladies and gentlemen

> We do not allow any crypto related applications.

Hetzner's public documentation only seems to forbid mining applications, which they started doing in May on all servers including dedicated.

There is also this Reddit post from about 1 month back that indicated they forbid crypto applications on cloud servers

https://www.reddit.com/r/ethstaker/comments/qwteod/be_careful_with_hetzner_any_crypto_activity_is/

but it appeared that did not apply to dedicated servers.

Has any one else on HN received a recent response from Hetzner regarding what is permitted on dedicated servers with respect to crypto applications?

22 comments

[ 2.2 ms ] story [ 62.1 ms ] thread
_3u10
I’m allowed to run crypto apps on my server because I didn’t ask them.
delhanty
Fair point - "ask for forgiveness not permission"
_3u10
You can still run them. I mean just don’t do it on an account that has anything you care about losing on it, though usually everywhere gives you a warning.
delhanty
Thanks - yes I am a bit square w.r.t. rules.
mytailorisrich
Well, if it's not disallowed in the T&Cs you need not ask for either... I guess that's the point being made.
pella
https://www.hetzner.com/legal/dedicated-server

  DEDICATED SERVER SERVICE AGREEMENT
  We strive to keep our networks operating at 
  the highest possible level, so all of our clients benefit from it. 
  Therefore the following actions are prohibited:

  - Operating applications that are used to mine crypto currencies
  - The scanning of foreign networks or foreign IP addresses
  - Manually changing the hardware address (MAC)
  - The use of fake source IPs.
delhanty
I read that thanks - it covers mining applications and I believe that change in May was triggered by Chia. In fact it was covered on HN

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27212239

pella
and the price of electricity is also important:

"According to levels at national energy exchanges and European platform EEX, wholesale prices of electricity jumped to new highs. For Tuesday, the price is at over EUR 400 per MWh for France, Germany, Netherlands, Belgium, Switzerland, Austria, Slovenia, Croatia, Hungary, Italy and Slovakia."

https://balkangreenenergynews.com/power-prices-reach-stunnin...

--------

Allowing crypto application is a message: allowing using electricity for supporting crypto - instead of society.

- "Blackouts Could Darken Europe This Winter"

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/newsletters/2021-12-17/blacko...

- "Europe’s Energy Crisis Is About to Get Worse as Winter Arrives"

https://time.com/6124191/winter-europe-energy/

mschuster91
Makes sense, given that some coins are absolutely destroying hardware to a point that the usual profitability calculations get wrecked as real MTBF of stuff like SSDs is way lower than expected MTBF.

Additionally, anything involving cryptocurrency is the equivalent of running on a battlefield, carrying a t-shirt with a crosshair print on it - hackers will target you and your provider to get at the coins, and on top of that providers already have to fight a torrent of people using leaked credentials or stolen credit cards to mine cryptocurrencies.

We are at a point where there are so many negative things associated with cryptocurrencies that it might be the best option to globally ban that shit forever:

- hardware being unavailable for retail buyers because crypto scalpers buy up everything... GPUs, CPUs, RAM, HDDs, SSDs - name a resource and there will be some coin that can be efficiently mined using it. Supply chain issues are bad enough already, the last thing we need is get-rich-quick idiots and scammers to accelerate price hikes.

- second-hand markets being destroyed by a glut of former mining hardware, the equivalents of a car with 500.000km on the clock

- environmental impact from all that waste

- environmental impact from the electricity used to run all the coin networks. There are first-world developed countries that use less power than Bitcoin, people are even running formerly decommissioned coal plants to power coin mine operations

- the impact on society that comes with the huge financial motivation for criminals to take over clients, servers or cloud computing accounts just to mine coins or to steal wallets

The only good things that came out of cryptocurrencies was a kick in the butts of Western Union and friends and democratizing drug use to a point where there now are solid majorities for legalization.

panarky
> globally ban that shit forever

If you have the power to globally ban shit forever, would you please start at the top of the list with nuclear weapons, food scarcity, fossil fuels and Facebook?

Jhsto
An anecdote: I had trouble participating in the Ethereum network properly, but then I synced my timeservers with Hetzner's NTP servers and things resolved. And at the time of writing, around 15% (roughly 500 nodes) of Ethereum nodes on hosting providers use Hetzner (though it seems it is consistently decreasing): https://www.ethernodes.org/networkType/Hosting

The likely reason for forbidding the applications is that syncing deteriorates the disks heavily. Nevertheless, they seem to be widely used to this date, as time synchronisation with them seems to have positive effect on node operation effectiveness.

delhanty
Ah that's interesting thanks - particularly the bit about 15% of Ethereum nodes using Hetzner.
Jhsto
I made a slight revision on my comment: it is 15% of nodes which are run on hosting providers. Therefore, the 500 nodes does not constitute 15% of the whole network, as only 70% of nodes run on hosting providers: https://www.ethernodes.org/network-types
leesalminen
I've been running both an Ethereum and Bitcoin node from my dedicated Hetzner box for years without issue. I wonder if you just got generic answers from a tier 1 support person who doesn't know much.
delhanty
> I've been running both an Ethereum and Bitcoin node from my dedicated Hetzner box for years without issue.

Informative thank you.

> I wonder if you just got generic answers from a tier 1 support person who doesn't know much.

Possibly - I wondered whether that was the case, which is why I did an "Ask HN".

mytailorisrich
I would ask them to point you towards the section of the T&C agreement where this is stated.

From what others have commented the T&Cs only disallow mining.

delhanty
I did that and the response was

> It is not mentioned directly that Ethereum is not allowed, but we write that "it is not limited to, ...."

referring to

>8.3. ... The operation of applications for mining cryptocurrencies remains prohibited. These include, but are not limited to, mining, farming and plotting of cryptocurrencies. We are entitled to lock the Customer’s access to their Hetzner services or account in the event of non-compliance.

from

https://www.hetzner.com/legal/terms-and-conditions/

mytailorisrich
'mining' is pretty clear.

Either the person you've been in contact woth is mistaken or they need to rewrite their T&Cs, IMHO...

I think you shouldn't have asked...

necovek
I am mostly saddened that "cryptocurrencies" are shortened to just "crypto".

It will lead to a whole mess of confusion when you start talking of cryptography (the original "crypto") with people who assume you mean cryptocurrencies.

Eg. I can imagine a tier 1 support person saying how some cryptography is forbidden already.

panarky
I regret that "literally" now means "figuratively" but language is a living, breathing thing that changes constantly.
tommiegannert
The problem comes when enough uncorrected misunderstandings causes words to mean both X and not X. After the figurative slippery slope, we would end up with all words meaning one thing: something (depending on context, who's talking, and who's listening). I don't think we're making future generations any service by diluting language.

As they say: be conservative in what you do, be liberal in what you accept from others. Here, I'd extend that to: conservative in what you do, liberal in what you accept, but providing feedback on what you barely accept.

necovek
Oh, I am perfectly fine with languages being living things.

It's just that these are more likely to get confused (literally and figuratively have opposite meaning, which makes it weird but not easy to misunderstand).