Ethereum, the world’s second-largest cryptocurrency, is about to make great strides as it is on the verge of putting an end to 99.95% of the whopping 78-terawatt hours per year of energy consumption. This transformational change has been considered one of the most remarkable events in the history of cryptocurrency, and it’s certainly a long shot for Ethereum. The merger will change the nature of Ethereum’s “proof of work” to the “proof of stake” model. This new model aims toward a less energy-intensive approach and requires a minimum stake of 32 Ether tokens. Anyone with this much stake can now easily become a validator for Ethereum.
Coupled with this, the previous “proof of work” model required proper validation through excessive blockchain transactions in which miners received ETH currency by utilizing a large amount of electricity from their “stacked banks of graphics cards”. Moreover, the miners have to invest a huge sum of money into the process in order to portray themselves as trustworthy, thus underlining the efforts. On the other hand, the “proof of stake” model is currently treasured at US$50,000. It should be noted that if anyone is found disobeying the codes of conduct of Ether in the form of indulging in fraudulent activities or being dishonest, they will be permanently removed from the cryptocurrency as validators.
Transforming into a completely new model makes the whole endeavor sound a lot riskier. Not only that, the cryptocurrency needs to incorporate this new software across its entire network, which will make the process a little bit more complex. This is because the entire Ether network revolves around the concept of “decentralization,” and for this reason, putting the software up in different data centers can be a difficult task. It is important to note that Ethereum has introduced a series of security practices to be followed for its different data centers in order to make the systems secure, and these are named “the surge,” “the purge,” “the verge” and “the splurge.” Watch the video embedded below to get into the insightful details:
To that end, the entire network of Ethereum Blockchain has been valued at around US$200 billion currently, and the purpose of this “merge” is aimed at cutting the consumption of energy and making it less from countries like Israel, Chile, Austria, or Venezuela. This will also be a remarkable achievement in terms of climate change and, as said, the most effective approach. Let’s see how it goes!