Thread by @euronewsnext

The transition known as "the Merge" has been finalised, Ethereum founder Vitalik Buterin confirmed.

The platform's switch to a less energy intense PoS technology could cut carbon emissions by more than 99.9%.#EthereumMerge
euronews.com/next/2022/09/1…

🗣"And we finalized!... Happy merge all. This is a big moment for the Ethereum ecosystem," Ethereum founder Vitalik Buterin said in a tweet.

The switch will take Ethereum from the intensive energy-consuming PoW model to the PoS model. Both mechanisms are used to confirm transactions and add new blocks to the chain, but they work differently.

The PoW system works like a competitive numeric guessing game and the first person to solve the puzzle is awarded a fixed amount of cryptocurrency.

It requires a global network of computers to run at the same time when a transaction takes place and therefore a lot of energy.

In the PoS system, you do not need the energy-consuming hardware as you acquire coins, which are put up as collateral in the staking process and there is then a random selection through the software.

The switch to PoS is "a step in the right direction on sustainability," Alex de Vries, an economist who runs the Digiconomist website, told Euronews Next.

De Vries says he is working on figuring out how much the switch will save energy. At the moment, he estimates it’s at least 99%.

"This translates to something like the electricity consumption of a country like Portugal (a quarter of all data centres in the world combined) vanishing overnight," he said.

But he added that PoS won’t totally solve crypto’s energy problem.

"Blockchain by design is just never going to be super-efficient technology."

Read in full: euronews.com/next/2022/09/1…