Ethereum transitioned from Proof of Work to Proof of Stake on 15 September 2022
However, despite the benefits of the switch, some Ethereum community members miss Proof of Work.
Vitalik Buterin says PoW was necessary for Ethereum's early stages but doesn't align with long-term goals.
Despite setbacks, staking activity on the Ethereum mainnet has surged since 2022, suggesting that the adoption of the PoS model is growing
One of the biggest milestones in Ethereum's history is its transition from a Proof of Work (PoW) blockchain to a Proof of Stake (PoS) one.
This transition, also known as the "merge" happened on 15 September 2022, and marked the point where Ethereum stopped relying on miners (like Bitcoin does) and started to rely on validators.
This switch from PoW to PoS marked a massive 99.95% decrease in Ethereum’s energy consumption level, paving the way for faster transactions and further upgrades like the 13 March Dencun upgrade this year.
However, despite all of these benefits, it appears that some Ethereum community members are under a bit of nostalgia, and miss the old days when Ethereum was a PoW network and relied on "good old" mining to get things done.
Let’s go over this issue, and what Ethereum co-founder, Vitalik Buterin had to say about it.
According to a recent thread from Amanda Cassatt, the founder and CEO of Serotonin (web3 marketing studio), more than a few community members long for the days of PoW, despite most of the community embracing the PoS model with open arms.
Cassatt’s thread showed that these community members were concerned with things like centralization and how the PoS model has been criticized for being prone to centralization.
Issues with the PoS model
Others included a shift in the power balance from miners to validators, as well as something about the PoS model “lacking a connection to the real world”.
Vitalik Buterin, the co-creator of Ethereum took notice of this debate and weighed in on the points.
Buterin, from the start, has been one of the most vocal advocates of the PoS model, based on energy consumption, fees and even centralization.
In a recent tweet, Buterin argued that the PoW model was necessary for Ethereum in the early days.
However, the PoW model also presented several issues that didn’t quite align with the network’s longer-term goals.
PoW was quite centralized
However, despite the benefits presented by the PoS model, there have been several attempts to create another "PoW Ethereum", with one of these attempts being from a group of miners who attempted to preserve a PoW version of Ethereum called EthereumPOW ($ETHW) via a hard fork after the merge.
At the time of writing, this cryptocurrency continues to struggle, with a market cap of less than $500 million and a 97% decline from its $143 all-time high, according to CoinMarketCap.
Moreover, data from Nansen shows that the Ethereum mainnet has seen a surge in validators and staking activity, with more than 20% of the cryptocurrency’s total supply currently staked as of 27 April.
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