After years of anticipation, the cryptocurrency ethereum finally implemented a major network upgrade that completely changes how the blockchain verifies transactions.
Called proof-of-stake, this new system has reduced ethereum’s energy consumption by more than 99%.
This is HUGE news for the cryptocurrency industry which has been struggling with high levels of energy usage. Energy usage has been one of the industry’s biggest targets for critique but it’s not likely that bitcoin will follow suit. Instead, the bitcoin network is sticking with a system called proof-of-work, in which highly specialized computers try to guess a winning number that serves to validate transactions and create new coins. This is what’s known as mining.
What is Proof-of-Stake?
Proof-of-stake is an algorithm that rewards users based on how many coins they hold or “stake” in the network. The more coins you stake, the more you stand to gain (or lose) if the network experiences a fork (a split into two different versions). Under proof-of-work, miners are rewarded for expending large amounts of computing power to validate transactions and mint new coins. By switching to proof-of-stake, ethereum hopes to reduce its enormous energy consumption and make itself more accessible to users who don’t have access to expensive mining hardware.
What does this mean for the future of cryptocurrency? Only time will tell but this seems like a really promising start! Stay tuned for more updates.
Ethereum’s Network Upgrade Reduces Energy Consumption by 99% in a move that could potentially save the cryptocurrency industry. This comes as good news as energy usage has been one of the biggest targets for critique when it comes to cryptocurrencies.
