The Ethereum Foundation has recently published a blog post discussing the energy savings that the much-awaited transition to Proof-of-Stake will bring to the Ethereum network. Of course, Ethereum 2.0’s beacon chain is already live, providing valuable insight into how the Proof-of-Stake consensus mechanism compares to Proof-of-Work from an energy usage basis.
With the switch to Proof-of-Stake, Ethereum will massively cut down on the amount of energy that’s currently being used by ETH miners.
Ethereum Miners Use 5.13 Gigawatts Per year
According to Digiconomist, Ethereum miners expend 44.49 TWh per year which means that they consume a total of 5.13 gigawatts on a continuous basis. When comparing this figure with the estimated power consumption of ETH stakers, researcher Carl Beekhuizen estimates that the new Proof-of-Stake system will be approximately 2,000 times more energy-efficient. This shows that about 99.95% of energy would be saved.
Even though we don’t know for sure when Ethereum will make the switch from PoW to PoS In the last few weeks, Ethereum developers launched an experimental testnet for the transition, which is often called “The Merge”.
In addition to adopting Proof-of-Stake, several scaling solutions that are being built for Ethereum will also contribute to the energy expended per transaction seeing a drastic reduction.
Tesla stops accepting Bitcoin because of environmental concerns
It is the same issue of energy expended that has pushed electric car making company Telsa to suspend the purchase of their vehicles with Bitcoin. According to a tweet by the CEO of Tesla, Elon Musk, he pointed out that the firm was greatly concerned with the use of fossil fuels for mining Bitcoin. He pointed out that even though Bitcoin and crypto are technologies with promising potential, they should not pose a great disadvantage to the environment and the world at large.
Musk mentioned that the firm is not looking to sell their Bitcoin holdings but would be open to using it for transactions as soon as miners start using an environmentally friendly sources for their mining operations. Musk also mentioned that he would be working in collaboration with Dogecoin developers to ensure that the transaction efficiency of the network is greatly improved. In his final statement, Musk mentioned that he is a great believer in crypto and what they stand for but won’t encourage the massive use of fossil fuels for activities, emphasizing coal.
