This increases the network's energy consumption and generates hardware waste. First, miners can increase their odds of success by investing in more powerful hardware, creating conditions for an arms race with miners acquiring increasingly power-hungry mining equipment. This mechanism of securing the network is problematic for several reasons. To successfully take control of the blockchain, a dishonest miner would have to consistently win the proof-of-work race by investing in sufficient hardware and energy to outperform the majority of other miners. To be eligible to submit a block of transactions, a miner must be the first to submit the solution to a computationally expensive puzzle. These conditions are met by imposing proof-of-work. The ability for any miner to add new blocks only works if there is a cost associated with mining and unpredictability about which specific node submits the next block. Honest blocks are added to the blockchain and become an immutable part of history. Any dishonesty shows up as an inconsistency between different nodes. The new blocks get broadcast to all the other node operators who run the transactions independently and verify that they are valid. Miners bundle together transactions into ordered blocks and add them to the Ethereum blockchain. Transactions on the Ethereum blockchain are validated by miners. Proof-of-work is a robust way to secure the network. Why proof-of-stake is greener than proof-of-work At the moment of the merge, Ethereum's proof-of-work mining will be switched off, proof-of-stake consensus will take over, and the energy consumed by the network will drop to <0.05% of its pre-merge amount. Merging Ethereum Mainnet with the Beacon Chain is expected to happen in the second half of 2022. Now that these have stabilized, teams are moving to the final stages of testing: transitioning long-lived testnets (Ropsten, Goerli, Sepolia) to proof-of-stake.
After these testnets, Ethereum developers launched new testnets for the community to use (Kiln & Kintsugi) and ran multiple shadow forks of existing testnets and Mainnet.
#Ethereum cryptocurrency jettison mining proofofstake software#
These helped client teams test the software before moving to longer-lived networks. In 2022, Ethereum developers transitioned several testing networks (testnets) running proof-of-work to proof-of-stake by merging with their own Beacon Chains. The Beacon Chain has been running the proof-of-stake since November 2020 alongside the proof-of-work Ethereum Mainnet. Therefore, the environmental cost of securing the network is drastically reduced. Swapping proof-of-work for proof-of-stake, where the real-world value invested comes from ETH staked directly in a smart contract, removes the need for miners to burn energy to add to the blockchain.
Both proof-of-work and proof-of-stake are just mechanisms to decide who gets to add the next block. The solution to the puzzle proves that energy has been expended by the miner, demonstrating that they invested real-world value for the right to add to the blockchain. Proof-of-work consensus requires miners to use their computing hardware to solve a puzzle. Therefore, the network started by using proof-of-work consensus. Since its inception, Ethereum has aimed to implement a proof-of-stake consensus mechanism, but doing this without compromising Ethereum's vision of being a secure, scalable, and decentralized blockchain has taken years of focused research and development. After The Merge, Ethereum will use dramatically less carbon to be more secure.
Ethereum's energy consumption will be reduced by ~99.95% following The Merge from proof-of-work (PoW) to proof-of-stake (PoS).
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