The Merge brings down Ethereum’s network power consumption by over 99.9%

The Merge, which is taken into account probably the most important blockchain upgrades on Ethereum thus far, introduced down the community’s power consumption by 99.9% instantly.

On Sept. 15, the Ethereum blockchain migrated from proof-of-work (PoW) to a proof-of-stake (PoS) consensus mechanism in an effort to transition right into a inexperienced blockchain. What adopted was a right away and steep drop in whole power consumption of the Ethereum community.

Earlier than the Merge improve, in 2022, the power consumption of Ethereum ranged between 46.31 terawatt hour (TWh) per yr to 93.98 TWh per yr. The bottom power consumption for Ethereum was recorded on Dec. 26, 2019, at 4.75 TWh per yr.

Ranging from Sept. 15, the day of the Ethereum Merge, Ethereum’s power dropped down by over 99.9% and continues to take care of low power utilization. Because of this, the community’s carbon footprint at present stands at 0.1 million tonnes of CO2 (MtCO2) per yr.

When translated to single Ethereum transactions, {the electrical} consumption is as little as 0.03-kilowatt hour (kWh) and the carbon footprint stands at 0.01 kgCO2, which, according to digiconomist, is equal to the power used when watching two hours of YouTube.

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Regardless of the celebrations round Ethereum’s transition to PoS, group members raised considerations associated to the blockchain’s centralization and better regulatory scrutiny.

The centralization aspect became evident proper after the Merge, as 46.15% of the nodes for storing knowledge, processing transactions and including new blockchain blocks may very well be attributed to simply two addresses.

Whereas Ethereum proponents declare that anybody with 32 Ether (ETH) can develop into a validator, it is very important observe that 32 ETH, or round $41,416, isn’t a small quantity for a beginner or widespread dealer.