Ethereum Foundation: ETH 2.0 will use 99.95% less energy

New estimates by the Ethereum Foundation indicate that the upgrade of Ethereum to proof of stake will drastically reduce the network’s energy requirements.

The upcoming ETH 2.0 upgrade of Ethereum could help reduce the blockchain’s energy consumption, according to Carl Beekhuizen, a researcher at the Ethereum Foundation.

“By my (very conservative) calculations, Ethereum will see a greater than ~99.95% reduction in energy use post merge,” Beekhuizen wrote in a research report published yesterday.

By my (very conservative) calculations, Ethereum will see a greater than ~99.95% reduction in energy use post merge.

— carlbeek.eth (@CarlBeek), 18 May 2021

Taking into account the total number of validators, unique addresses and the average energy consumed by the hardware, the resulting figure was significantly lower than Ethereum’s current energy requirements when using the proof-of-work (PoW) consensus mechanism.

Currently, the Ethereum blockchain uses the same energy-hungry PoW consensus mechanism employed by Bitcoin. This will soon change, however, thanks to Ethereum 2.0. The ambitious multi-year upgrade will transition the network to a greener consensus mechanism called proof of stake (PoS).

This is because proof of stake relies on users locking, or staking, Ethereum to support the production of new blocks rather than using energy-intensive mining rigs.

In terms of energy required per transaction, ETH 2.0 uses the equivalent of “about 20 minutes of TV”, he added. By comparison, a transaction on PoW Ethereum requires the same amount of electricity that can be used to power a house for 2.8 days, while a Bitcoin transfer consumes “38 days of a home”.

Although ETH 2.0 is only in its preliminary stages, users have already locked (i.e. staked) more than $4 million in tokens within it.

The first testnets for post-merge Ethereum, when the blockchain will fully transition to ETH 2.0, were launched at the end of April. A definitive date for the full launch, however, has notoriously been difficult to set.

Beekhuizen concluded that “Ethereum’s days of high energy consumption are numbered, and I hope this is true for the rest of the sector as well.”

Translated from decrypt.co