Energy costs to maintain the Ethereum blockchain could fall by about 2,000-fold following the transition from Proof-of-Work to Proof-of-Stake. This assessment was provided by ETH2 developer Karl Beekhuizen.
By my (very conservative) calculations, Ethereum will see a greater than ~99.95% reduction in energy use post merge.
Dig into the details here: https://t.co/BOiilkZm5a
— carlbeek.eth (@CarlBeek) May 18, 2021
According to the expert, there are currently 140,592 validators in the second version of the Ethereum protocol, or 87,897 if staking services and exchanges are excluded.
According to rough calculations by Beekhuizen, Beacon Chain’s energy consumption stands at 2.62 MW, including 1.64 MW attributed to solo stakers.
The first figure is equivalent to the energy costs of a small U.S. city for about 2,100 homes. In other words, it is not appropriate to compare it with megacities, individual entities, or states as a whole, which is typical for Proof-of-Work.
The developer noted that under Proof-of-Stake, network security rises as the token’s price increases, while electricity costs remain unchanged. This does not occur with Proof-of-Work, in which there is a close positive correlation between hash rate and price.
Beekhuizen reminded of Digiconomist’s estimates of Ethereum miners’ energy consumption — 44.5 TWh per year. His calculations imply that ETH2’s energy costs will be reduced by 2,000x.
For illustration, the expert provided a chart comparing the average per-transaction indicator across the networks of Bitcoin, ETH1 and ETH2.
Leading ETH2 developer Danny Ryan, speaking to Bloomberg, gave even more optimistic estimates than Beekhuizen: the savings would be 10,000x, rather than 2,000x.
“I will be happy when the transition happens. One of the biggest problems will be resolved,” commented Vitalik Buterin.
He expressed hope that the changes would take place by the end of the year. Skeptics say it is more realistic to target the first half of 2022.
“By combining Proof-of-Stake and a growing DeFi ecosystem, Ethereum will continue to take market share from Bitcoin,” said Pantera Capital founder Dan Morehead.
Earlier, Buterin predicted the lag of digital gold without improving its energy efficiency.
Earlier, the Ethereum co-founder criticised Elon Musk’s plan to scale Dogecoin.
Subscribe to ForkLog’s channel on YouTube!