Ethereum switches to Proof-of-Stake after 7 years of work

Ethereum switches to Proof-of-Stake after 7 years of work

Ethereum switched to Proof-of-Stake (POS) after the height of finally its underlying consensus model Seven years

The merging of the protocol was triggered to 6:43 a.m. UTC (2:43 am) on Thursday, September 15th, when Blockchain A reached Terminal difficulty of 58,750,000,000 tons. Ether was traded around $ 1,588,12 after the energy-saving software upgrade, Blockworks-forschung Data shown.

After 13 tense minutes, the developers and researchers from Ethereum confirmed that new blocks or slots, as they are called at the Proof-of-Stake Ethereum, were produced and completed.

Over 40,000 live viewers switched on the live stream of the Ethereum Foundation at the time of the event.

The most expected event in the crypto world, the merger was one of the most difficult technical masterpieces in the industry, according to the analysis company Bitooda.

"It represents a change in the underlying consensus engine of the blockchain, while Ethereum continues to run and supports the defici, NFT and app economy, which are over $ 100 billion," said Vivek Raman, POS manager of Bitooda.

his upgrade also aims to accidentally silence critics of the energy consumption of industry, which is partly responsible for the contribution to climate change.

The Ethereum Foundation Estimates that the merging with POS drastically reduces the blockchain by 99.95 %.

"So many people think that all blockchain projects are terrible for our climate," said Lia Holland, campaign and communication director of the non-profit interest representation Fight for the future, in A statement .

"The Ethereum merges shows real measures of one of the largest chains to reduce their energy consumption to 1/1000 of their previous consumption."

The activation of POS also drops the issue of new deliveries from ETH and some advocates that the effects are three Bitcoin-thighing events. This means that the number of ethers that are gained per day is reduced from 13,000 to around 1,600 per day.

Before that, a single transaction on Ethereum required enough energy to supply an average US budget for one with electricity

"In terms of energy consumption, it will now be among other protocols that are considered sustainable, such as Tezos, Solana and Algorand," he said. "Since it is still the second largest blockchain in the world at a great distance, it offers an opportunity for sustainable blockchain projects that are looking for a home."

"Currently the costs of data availability for rollups are the primary scalability bottleneck for the entire transaction processing of Ethereum," said Connoly in a Blog entry Monday. "The short -term (2023) scalability updates are mainly mechanisms to reduce these costs."

This includes a proposal to reduce data costs by storing data blob-a data type that contains binary data-for a short time to Beacon nodes.

The other would be to reduce data costs by allowed to only save a subset of data about Sharding, said Connoly. Sharing for Ethereum refers to the process of distributing the network clinical at 64 separate shads.

But a final point in time when this could actually occur is unclear in view of the slow and steady development approach of Ethereum.

It will take a long time

Ethereum first expressed his intention to switch to POS shortly after his introduction in 2015.

The transition was characterized by constant delays that were advertised at the time in order to give the team more time for the preparation, much to the dismay of the impatient user base of the network.

There were also enough time Ethereum founder Vitalik Buterin to put together different writings through his findings in these years. These are published in a rel = "Nofollow noopener" target = "_ blank" href = "https://twitter.com/vitalikbuterin/status/1564804705973611153"> Buchen later this month.

The light fire Chain, the core mechanism of the new network, was finally started in December 2020. That was one of the first milestones in the run -up to the event. Since then Ethereum has been running a POS chain (Beacon Chain) and a Proof-of-Work (Pow) change.

Goerli - the third and last test network from Ethereum - was one of the last hurdles that the chain had to overcome before its final transition to POS, at the beginning of the last month.

The end of the merging not only means the integration of both chains, but is also a great symbolic gain for those who have contributed to their code base over the years.

Because the Chain illuminated fire has been running for almost two years-there have been Mainnet Shadow Forks and 3 Live-Testnet-Merges-the duration and frequency of the tests have significantly increased the probability of success, said Mark Connors, head of research at 3IQ Digital Assets.

What are the risks?

The main risks of the merger included unforeseen technical problems or a significant change in gas fees. And while those who have played an important role in the stability of the network as a Pow concept, some accept the change less.

The controversial Ethereum Pow-Fork (ETHW), which is expected to be officially started within 24 hours after the merger, is such a concept that questions the transition to POS that threatens to get miner out of business.

Nevertheless, most of the industry intends to continue with minor problems that can easily be remedied by developers after merging, say analysts.

"The Ethereum Foundation reward of $ for programmers who have found is an example of how much focus and energy It is used to master these efforts, ”said Connors.

For ETH token owners and the Ethereum network, a lot has now changed fundamentally. The debate about whether Ethereum could turn Bitcoin around will continue in the months after the merger. This remains to be seen for the time being. You can find more block works articles about the Ethereum merge here.

. .

The contribution Ethereum switches to Proof-of-Stake after 7 years of work and is not financial advice.