Tag: Eth2.0

Ethereum Energy consumption, Carbon Footprint Reduce 99.99% after Merge

by Blockchain News

The Crypto Carbon Ratings Institute (CCRI), a research-driven institution providing carbon estimates for investments in cryptocurrencies and technologies, has issued a report showing that Ethereum Merge, which was successfully completed last night, has drastically reduced the blockchain network’s overall energy consumption.

According to the report issued on Thursday September 15, Ethereum’s energy usage and carbon footprint have both dropped even more than anticipated after the Merger upgrade.

The report said Ethereum now uses approximately 99.99% less energy after the merge was completed. It further mentioned that the blockchain’s carbon footprint has also fallen by over 99.99%.

In the past, the Ethereum Foundation estimated that the merge would cut the network’s energy consumption by approximately 99.95%.

The CCRI report disclosed that Ethereum’s overall electricity consumes just 2,600-megawatt hours per year, compared to 23 million megawatt hours before the merge. As a result, Ethereum’s estimated annual CO2 emissions have fallen from over 11 million tons to just under 870 —less than the combined total of 100 average American homes, per the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).

In a statement yesterday, Uli Gallersdörfer, CCRI co-founder and CEO, said that Ethereum’s “green credentials” are now at par with other energy-efficient blockchain networks that started with a proof-of-stake consensus model, rather than transitioning to it as Ethereum just did.

However, Ethereum’s move to proof of stake (PoS) consensus model has not gone well with some industry stakeholders. Ethereum miners, who used to run powerful computers to secure the network and earn ETH rewards through mining, have moved on to mine cryptocurrency on other networks.

Miners have moved their powerful rigs to other blockchain networks like Ethereum Classic (ETC), Ravencoin (RVN), and Ergo (ERG) to do mining.

Why the Merge Is Important

Ethereum’s switch to proof of stake has been planned since 2014, before the official deployment of the blockchain. Due to its technical complexity and the increasingly large amount of money at risk, the upgrade has been delayed several times.

The Merge is part of what in the past was called “Ether 2.0,” a series of upgrades that reshape the blockchain’s foundations.

The move, known as “the Merge,” is of huge consequence. The major network upgrade, which saw Ethereum transition from PoW to PoS, was designed to address concerns about its environmental impact, dramatically improve its transaction speed, and boost the value of Ethereum, among other improvements.

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Ethereum PoS Might Be Still Heavily Centralized: Santiment Data

by Blockchain News

Ethereum as a Proof-of-Stake (PoS) consensus model is still in its infancy, and on-chain data has started picking up some minor flaws in its organization.

Ethereum2.jpg

According to data from blockchain analytics provider, Santiment, there seems to be a heavy centralization in the new protocol per validator’s count.

According to the tweet from Santiment;

“According to our #Ethereum Post Merge Inflation dashboard, 46.15% of the #proofofstake nodes for storing data, processing transactions, and adding new #blockchain blocks can be attributed to just two addresses. This heavy dominance by these addresses is something to watch.”

One of the major selling points of the transition to Proof-of-Stake is that it is bound to be more decentralized as the costs of setting up a mining rig, as in the Proof-of-Work era, can be eliminated entirely.

While it is safe to assume that Ethereum 2.0 is still new and more validators are waiting for stability before being onboarded, the current outlook is an argument for any potential token that may be created as a result of the protocol’s hard fork.

Centralization May Usher in ‘Security’ Argument

While Ethereum prides itself as a community-owned token, the US regulators, including the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), still find it challenging to liken the coin to a non-security as it did Bitcoin.

This puts the cryptocurrency in a tight spot, and the transition to Proof-of-Stake may not have made any significant difference in changing the coin’s outlook. Should the update from Santiment be anything to go by, centralization will further help the regulator’s argument that only a few individuals are controlling the creation of the token for others to trade and invest in.

Ethereum 2.0 has been in the works for quite some time now, and some of these intricacies must have been reasoned out. Before long, the expectation is that things will normalize, and Ethereum may finally walk its way up amongst the most functional PoS protocols out there.

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Ethereum Foundation Rebrands ETH 2.0 to Consensus Layer, Breaking Broken Mental Model to Users

by Blockchain News

With the evolution of the Ethereum roadmap, ETH 2.0 has emerged as an inaccurate representation, and this has necessitated its rebranding so that a broader audience can comprehend its content. 

The Ethereum Foundation explained:

“One major problem with the ETH2 branding is that it creates a broken mental model for new users of Ethereum. They intuitively think that ETH1 comes first and ETH2 comes after. Or that ETH1 ceases to exist once ETH2 exists. Neither of these is true.”

The advancement of the Ethereum network calls for more measures beyond protocol development, like a critical shift in terminologies used, according to the Ethereum Foundation. 

As a result, Ethereum 1.0 will be renamed as “the execution layer”, whereas Ethereum 2.0 will change to the “consensus layer”. Therefore, Ethereum will be made up of the execution and consensus layers.

Furthermore, rebranding is expected to keep bad actors at bay. Per the announcement:

“Unfortunately, malicious actors have attempted to use the ETH2 misnomer to scam users by telling them to swap their ETH for ‘ETH2’ tokens … we hope this updated terminology will bring clarity to eliminate this scam vector and help make the ecosystem safer.”

With the merge of the two layers slated for Q2 2022, a transition to the proof of stake (PoS) consensus mechanism is expected, deemed more environmentally friendly and cost-effective. 

 

Ethereum's upgrade path

Source: The Ethereum Foundation

The shift is also anticipated to prompt a 1% annual deflation rate, according to research by crypto service provider LuckyHash. The study noted:

“When the quantity of pledge exceeds 100 million, the annual issuance rate will stabilize at 1.71%, that is, the average daily output is about 5600. If by then the upgraded Ethereum can maintain the current burn volume, it can achieve 1% deflation every year.”

Ethereum edged Visa in terms of trading volume in 2021 by hitting $11.6 trillion.  

Meanwhile, ETH regained some momentum by up 0.1% in the last 24 hours, hitting $2,385 during intraday trading after plugging to a 6-months low, according to CoinGecko.

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Data Shows Ether (ETH) Supply on Centralized Exchanges at a 3 Year Low

by Btcmanager

Data from cryptocurrency intelligence firm OKLink indicates that ether (ETH) supply on centralized exchanges is at a 3-year low.

Ether’s Scarce Supply Among CEXs

Ether (ETH), the cryptocurrency powering the vast majority of the rapidly developing digital assets space has hit a 3-year low supply at all centralized exchanges, data from OKLink shows.

Notably, a mere 9.4% of ETH is currently held in centralized crypto exchanges which happens to be the lowest figure since 2018.

According to data, out of the 117 million ETH currently in circulation, only 11 million were held on crypto wallet addresses related to CEXs. For the uninitiated, ETH is the world’s second-largest cryptocurrency by reported market cap only following bitcoin (BTC).

The current 11 million ETH held in CEXs across the world is the lowest since 9 million out of the total of 97 million ether held in CEX addresses in February 2018.

Speaking to Coindesk, Eddie Wang, senior researcher at OKLink attributed the lowering ETH supply across centralized exchanges to the rise of decentralized finance (DeFi).

Wang pointed out the significance of Wrapped Ether (WETH) in concentrating ETH supply as it is the top address in the Ether Rich List. In addition, the declining ETH supply across CEXs is due to the rising amount of deposits and liquidity pools hosted by popular DeFi protocols that suck away the ether liquidity from centralized exchanges.

For the uninitiated, Wrapped Ether essentially ‘wraps’ ether into an ERC-20 token that is relatively easier and cheaper to swap and transfer around. Of the total ether supply, WETH represents a considerable 5.7% supply.

Ethereum 2.0 Adding Fuel to Fire

Wang added the anticipation toward Ethereum’s highly-anticipated ETH2.0 upgrade might be adding to ether’s supply-side crisis among centralized exchanges.

According to data from Dune Analytics, close to 6.5 million ether is locked into ETH2.0 deposit contract address.

In related news, BTCManager reported that approximately 23% of the ETH supply is currently locked in smart contracts across the blockchain and cryptocurrency industry.

Most recently, the Ethereum network successfully underwent the London hard fork that witnessed the implementation of the highly contentious EIP-1599 upgrade which aims to make ETH a deflationary asset over the long term.

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Vitalik Buterin Predicts Eth2 to Boost Enterprise Ethereum Adoption

by Btcmanager

Vitalik Buterin has hinted that he is very bullish on Eth2 development. The Russian-Canadian programmer says a successful launch of the much-anticipated Eth2 will significantly boost Ethereum adoption by businesses globally. 

Buterin Bullish on Eth2 Development 

The Ethereum development community has been making significant progress in the journey towards Ethereum 2.0. And cofounder Vitalik Buterin has hinted that despite the fact that Eth2 development has taken much longer than expected, he firmly believes that the team will soon achieve its mission to transform the network into an ecosystem without limits.

During the ongoing Hyperledger Global Summit 2021, the 27-year-old Ethereum co-founder, who recently became one of crypto’s youngest billionaires after his ether (ETH) stash mooned significantly this bull season, reiterated that:

“Our vision in Ethereum has always been to be this platform that’s open to all these different applications where the limit is just your creativity. But if in practice, the economics make it only possible to do just a few things, then in some ways that’s a big limitation on how much of our mission we could actually accomplish.”

Scalability & Interoperability Important for Blockchains 

While bitcoin (BTC) is steadily gaining ground globally as a legal tender and hedge against hyperinflation, Ethereum has become the number one network for decentralized finance (DeFi) and smart contracts.

Ethereum’s huge success over the years has come with its own challenges, including reduced scalability and exorbitant gas fees, though the latter has decreased significantly in the past few days due to the current crypto markets bloodbath.

During a fireside chat with Brian Behlendorf, the executive director of Hyperledger, Buterin noted that layer-2 scaling solutions such as rollups and sharding hold huge promise.

“So [sharding will boost scalability] x100, rollups times a hundred, the two multiplied times ten thousand. And the hope is that you can simultaneously make the Ethereum network able to handle more users and reduce transaction fees,” he said.

What’s more, Buterin buttressed the need for public blockchains to be more interoperable. 

“We should have an ecosystem where businesses and everyone can just all live together and the ecosystems can kind of plug into each other and benefit each other much more. But the challenge is that if you want anyone to be building on the public chain then, then also privacy issues have to be solved,” said Buterin.

In related news, layer-2 solution, Arbitrum officially went live on May 28, and a vast array of Ethereum-based protocols are now tapping the former to circumvent the latter’s shortcomings. 

At press time, the price of ether (ETH) is hovering around $2,558, with a market capitalization of $295.92 billion, according to CoinMarketCap.

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Analysts Speculate Money Boom as M2 Supply Follows Upward Trend

by Btcmanager

According to financial analysts, the money supply has seen a 26% increase since February 2020. The last time that level of increase transpired was over 70 years ago.

Facing Unique Financial Times

Bitcoin, which several analysts term as a ‘speculative asset’, has recently had price surges, reaching new all-time highs in just a couple of weeks. This price boost in digital assets like BTC coupled with the now common economic trends including inflation might possibly be the catalyst behind the money supply increase. 

Cryptocurrency adoption is one factor that businessmen like Warren Buffet are very hesitant about. However, Hip-hop artists like Snoop Dogg and multi-billionaire businessmen like Elon Musk are driving the public to take the so-called ‘leap of faith’. These individuals have somewhat created a market manipulation illusion that has driven many into investments. The money supply is bound to grow when people decide to go beyond their comfort zones.

It hasn’t been a pretty ride for the monetary markets over the last year.


Each and every trend of monetary exchanges that follow the US dollar was predictable. It resulted in the increased price of raw materials, commodities, food commodities, fuel, and transportation products that consumers are used to and need, thus stimulating a boom or a double boom and subsequent price increases. The COVID-19 pandemic hasn’t been merciful either, almost forcing a large percentage of the population worldwide to make digital transactions.

Money In, Money Out

Financial speculators could argue that the increase in M2 supply would most certainly guarantee an inflation percentage increase. In the last decade, China’s monetary-supply growth averaged a 23% increase annually. Nonetheless, the inflation rates have hopped from negative percentages 10 years ago to about 2.6%  currently. 

Technology has changed many financial sectors positively. Capital markets have grown with massive investment, advanced and automated trading systems have sped up execution, firms have become more efficient and knowledge has been acquired at a faster rate than before. This results in additional cash flow and more money.

Crypto-verse Grows, Money Boom Looms

The BTC market cap recently surged past $1T and attained a new ATH, recording a $56K price valuation. Several other crypto prices such as Polkadot and BNB are on the rise and the much-awaited ETH2.0 network has seen many Ethereum investors go bullish rather than bearish. As digital asset prices fluctuate, the value of these assets has meant nothing short of increased volatility.

Safe to say, more people every day want a piece of the cryptocurrency cake, though, institutional investors are not exactly excited at the prospect of incorporating crypto in their portfolio. Bitcoin is quickly becoming one of the most well-known and fully utilized forms of currency. As more people discover the virtual collectible that has attracted a growing number of serious investors, the price of Bitcoin will continue to climb.


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How Staking and Eth 2.0 Makes the Ethereum Economy More “Sustainable”

by Coindesk

In this episode, Christine Kim and Will Foxley discuss with David Hoffman, the co-founder of Bankless, the market implications of a dual Ethereum blockchain and what new realities staking presents to the long-term value proposition of ether.

According to Hoffman’s “Ether as a triple-point asset” thesis, Ethereum 2.0 bolsters ether’s value proposition as a capital asset. This is because Eth 2.0 enables staking on the protocol level.

For all ether holders with a minimum balance of 32 ETH, they can earn an annual percentage return for locking in their crypto assets to the network and becoming a validator. This is a use case for ether on top of its existing functionalities as a form of payment for fees and as a store of value in decentralized finance applications.

Eth 2.0 strengthens the diverse ways in which ether can be used. However, it also complicates the monetary policy of the Ethereum protocol. Instead of ether issuance being restricted to one blockchain network, the launch of Eth 2.0 has effectively created two parallel networks both issuing ether and driving up the crypto asset’s total supply.

However, the dual issuance of ether is a temporary state that in the long run will make the Ethereum economy more “sustainable,” according to Hoffman.

“Ethereum has committed to this early research and development phase in the beginnings of its genesis. That’s the whole entire effort behind Eth 2.0 and that’s why the monetary policy of ether is so jagged and unpredictable because the monetary policy of ether is a tool for Ethereum to reach its goals,” said Hoffman.

And what are Ethereum’s goals exactly? Listen to the full episode to find out!

For more weekly insights on Eth 2.0 development, be sure to check out and subscribe to Will Foxley and I’s weekly newsletter, Valid Points.

Links mentioned in the podcast:

EthHub Explainer on Ethereum Monetary Policy –

https://docs.ethhub.io/ethereum-basics/monetary-policy/

Lyn Alden’s blog post –

An Economic Analysis of Ethereum

Rocket Pool –

https://www.rocketpool.net

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Coinbase Users Can Now Join Eth2 Staking Rewards Waitlist

by Btcmanager

Coinbase cryptocurrency exchange has announced that clients interested in staking their ether (ETH) tokens to earn an annual percentage yield (APY) of 7.5 percent when Ethereum 2.0 finally goes live, can now make their intent known by joining its waitlist, according to a blog post on February 16, 2021.

Coinbase Opens its Door for Eth2 Staking 

Vitalik Buterin and members of the Ethereum Foundation have been working round the clock to make the Eth2 upgrade a huge success, and that hard work seems to be gradually paying off, as more than $5 billion worth of ether (ETH) has been staked on the Beacon Chain by top crypto exchanges and whales who have the required 32 ETH to play with.

Now, in anticipation of the official transitioning of Ethereum from proof of work (PoW) to the proof of stake (PoS) consensus algorithm, Coinbase, a leading U.S.-based crypto exchange, has announced that customers interested in staking their Ether on its platform can now join a waitlist pending when staking commences.

Coinbase wrote:


“Starting today, the waitlist to earn staking rewards with ETH2 is live. With the new Ethereum upgrade to ETH2, Coinbase customers will be able to earn rewards using the second most popular cryptocurrency after bitcoin. Staking allows customers to earn a yield of up to 7.5 percent for simply holding ETH2.”   

Lowering the Barrier to Entry

While the mantra of “not your keys, not your coins,” remains the best legacy to follow in the rapidly evolving cryptoverse, as there have been several rogue exchanges that have carted away with users’ funds in the past, the fact still remains that the services of highly reputed trading venues such as Coinbase, Binance and a few others, significantly lower the barrier to entry and accelerate mass crypto adoption.

Coinbase has made it clear that once the waiting period is over, customers will be able to stake any amount of ether they wish, as there are no minimums, and they will be able to decide whether to stake and earn rewards on their entire ETH balance or use just a portion of it.

What’s more, the exchange says customers will initially not be able to trade, sell or send the portion of ether they choose to stake, however, it plans to make trading of staked ETH possible in the near future.

“Initially, customers will not be able to sell or send the portion of Ethereum that they choose to stake. However, Coinbase will offer a way to trade any stake their Ethereum in the coming months. Customers in New York State are not currently eligible to sign-up for the waitlist,” it added.

Coinbase currently offers staking rewards to users who stake some established PoS coins on its platform, including Tezos (XTZ) and Cosmos (ATOM).

At press time, the price of ether (ETH) sits at $1,814, with a market capitalization of $208.08 billion as seen onCoinMarketCap.


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Eth 2.0 Development: Next Steps to Upgrade and Diversify

by Coindesk

In this episode, Christine Kim and Will Foxley discuss with Ethereum Foundation researcher Danny Ryan the roll-out of the Ethereum 2.0 development roadmap, starting with the launch of phase 0 and the Beacon Chain.

“Not a surprise but a relief.”

That’s how Ryan characterized how he felt about the successful activation of the Eth 2.0 network in early December.

“We were confident going in but it’s been excellent to see it go so well,” Ryan said. “Compared to some of our testnet launches, they got better and better. But the mainnet launch was more successful than any of those.”

As of Jan. 27, the parallel Ethereum network dubbed “Ethereum 2.0” has accumulated over $3.6 billion in staked ether. There are over 72,000 active participants called “validators” securing network operations, with another 16,000 awaiting activation in a queue for entry into Eth 2.0.

The absence of unexpected bugs, hacks and attacks has certainly been the source of much celebration for Ethereum developers. Ben Edgington, product owner for Eth 2.0 software client Teku, wrote in a weekly newsletter on Dec. 12, “It’s been a wonderfully dull [11] days since genesis: [A]pparently it all just works.”

It’s not all perfect, however.

Ryan explained that there are a few fixes, tweaks and improvements he’d like to see made on Eth 2.0 over the next few months. First and foremost is “an iterative upgrade in the middle of this year which would clean up a couple of things in state management, more technical-side things and also add a nice feature which enables light clients as a first class citizen for the Beacon Chain.” (More information on Eth 2.0’s first planned upgrade here.)

Ryan mentioned he is optimistic the distribution of software clients being used by validators to connect to the network would diversify.

“It looks like 50% of nodes on the network are Prysm,” Ryan said. Nodes are computers that store and share blockchain data. “It’s not quite where we want it to be. I’ll say time and time again there are four fantastic clients out there. I don’t run Prysm in my own setup and I’m stable and happy.”

Find out more about what other developments and milestones Ryan expects the Eth 2.0 network to accomplish this year by listening to the full podcast episode.

For weekly analysis and commentary about Ethereum 2.0, be sure to sign up for CoinDesk’s Valid Points newsletter.

Links mentioned in the podcast:

Danny Ryan’s blog post –

https://blog.ethereum.org/2021/01/20/the-state-of-eth2-january-2021/

Etherscan’s breakdown of Eth 2.0 deposits –

https://bi.etherscan.io/public/dashboards/KH9jbP687szqlAnHiNEfNictrwNhvdOEQl0PwB6m?org_slug=default

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Ethereum 2.0 Goes Live Exceeding the Deposit Requirement by 524,288 ETH

by Btcmanager
ethereum 2.0 block inside a tub

ethereum 2.0 block inside a tubThe Ethereum community had announced the release of the Beacon Chain as Ethereum 2.0 went live yesterday at 12pm UTC. This launch has been backed by the ETH community with almost 900,000 staked ETH, surpassing the 524,288 ETH required for the upgrade. ETH 2.0 Is Finally Here After weeks of investors actively staking their ETH

Read MoreRead More. The post by Evan Ezquer appeared first on BTCManager, Bitcoin, Blockchain & Cryptocurrency News

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