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The merger eventually happened. Ethereum will never be the same

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Alpha:

  • Consolidation, Ethereum’s long-awaited and technically astounding switch to a proof-of-stake consensus system, has finally happened.
  • The huge move officially marks the joining of Ethereum’s mainnet execution layer with the beacon chain consensus layer. Ethereum developers created the Beacon chain in 2020 and until now it has been running in parallel with the Ethereum mainnet.
  • After officially switching from its original proof-of-work consensus process, the Ethereum blockchain’s energy consumption is expected to drop to between 99.5 and 99.99 percent.

Why is this important?

NFTs have long held a (somewhat unjustified) reputation for being environmentally disastrous, as blockchains rely heavily on energy-intensive proof-of-work consensus processes. This system requires the blockchain network’s computers to perform complex, cryptographically-key calculations to add blocks to the chain.

An energy-intensive system by design, PoW consensus is a method of ensuring security in the blockchain network and the public ledger that prevents anyone from messing with the blockchain. Until today, the combined energy consumption of Bitcoin and Ethereum sat somewhere between the annual energy consumption of Italy and the UK. Perspective is crucial, though, as the biggest environmental offender in the blockchain space doesn’t even crack Bitcoin’s energy requirements, which Google, Apple, and Amazon need to run their data centers.

With Ethereum’s consolidation, its blockchain has dropped that map almost entirely. While it will take some time to measure the actual energy consumption of this new PoS system, both Ethereum developers and independent blockchain experts predict a reduction of anywhere between 99.5 and 99.99 percent. This is orders of magnitude lower power consumption, and a huge win for Web3 as it heads into the future

what next

Wait for the fork. Not everyone is happy about Ethereum’s consolidation, as the move potentially puts thousands of crypto miners out of a job that put its PoW system out of business. Groups of miners, such as EthereumPOW, have recently made a lot of noise about forking (splitting) the network and pursuing a PoW-powered Ethereum blockchain (called ETHW). The group announced its intention to fork the network within 24 hours of the merger.

If they do, it could be duplicating digital assets from the official Ethereum chain (up to the moment of the fork). The decentralized nature of the blockchain means that there is no governing body to declare these assets, ETH or NFT, as invalid. However, since most Web3 groups and denizens plan to follow Ethereum when it moves to PoS, there is a general consensus that assets on that chain will remain valid.

Regardless, be on the lookout for bad actors trying to sell assets from the forked chain or anyone telling you that you’ve got extra ETH on the network that they can help you dispose of. You don’t need to do anything with ETH or NFT to “update” or “sync up” with a new version of the Ethereum blockchain.

But wait! There’s more:



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