On September 15th, the “king of public chains”, Ethereum, officially completed its merge and successfully shifted to the PoS mechanism. This is a milestone moment in the history of Ethereum, and an important moment for the PoS mechanism.
When the merge was officially completed, Vitalik Buterin, the co-founder of Ethereum, released a message announcing a historic moment for the Ethereum ecosystem. Ethereum triggered the merge mechanism at block height 15537393 and produced the first PoS block with height 15537394. Since then, the Ethereum consensus has officially shifted from Proof-of-Work to Proof-of-Stake.
The most obvious change to Ethereum is the reduction of energy consumption after the switch to PoS mechanism, which is considered to be a fully decentralized mechanism, but has been criticized by global regulators for the large amount of energy consumption required to ensure network security, and has been the “slot” of the cryptocurrency. According to Ethereum’s disclosure, in order to maintain security and decentralization, the Ethereum proof of workload consumes 73.2 TWh of energy per year, which is equivalent to the energy consumption of a medium-sized Austrian country. In a Digiconomist estimate, before the transition to PoS, a single Ethereum transaction used 200.05 kilowatt-hours of electricity, the equivalent of 6.7 days of electricity use in the average U.S. household. Today, the biggest change in Ethereum’s move to a PoS mechanism is the elimination of miners and the responsibility of verifiers to protect the network. Following the merger, Ethereum has reduced its energy use by 99.988% and its CO2 emissions by 99.992%, a reduction that, according to a new report from the Crypto Carbon Ratings Institute (CCRI), means the network now emits less CO2 than hundreds of U.S. households do during an entire year of electricity use.
The move to PoS is an upgrade to the Ethereumnet network, not a “battle” between PoW and PoS.
Simply put, PoS is more secure, consumes less energy, and is better suited for implementing new scaling solutions. But in reality, both mechanisms share a common end goal – to help decentralized networks reach consensus securely. It is just that different blockchain projects choose the mechanism that is more beneficial to the ecosystem development at different stages of development, and many blockchain projects choose to use multiple consensus mechanisms together to complement each other. The consensus mechanism is considered the core of blockchain. The AET public chain also adopts different consensus mechanisms at different stages. in the pre-mining stage, the AET public chain uses the PoW protocol; in the normal mining and pledging stage, it shifts to the more energy-efficient and advanced PoS mechanism. PoW can ensure that the AET public chain is completely decentralized, fair and just, without the need for a centralized management body, and the nodes achieve fair competition among themselves.
PoS, on the other hand, shortens the consensus time and can achieve millisecond transaction speed. However, both consensus mechanisms have inevitable drawbacks. The main drawback of PoW is that it wastes energy and consumes arithmetic power, while PoS tends to lead to a large concentration of tokens and poor liquidity. Based on the characteristics of the above two consensus mechanisms, the AET public chain adopts master node technology to obtain a new governance mechanism, ensures the decentralization of the AET network, and provides a safe and stable network environment for the global circulation of electronic currencies such as AET and ACU. As a leading public chain, Ethereum provides samples for the industry in terms of the design concept, technical architecture and consensus algorithm, and the conversion of PoS mechanism in Ethereum will also provide an example for the industry and become a “star project” in the PoS camp.
What’s special is that AET also applies PoS mechanism to community governance. In the AET community, the PoS incentive consensus mechanism works on a per-capital basis. According to the community governance regulations, each member of the AET community can receive incentives based on the number of corresponding AETs held. The PoS incentive consensus mechanism gives more rewards to the community members and motivates them to build the community better, forming a virtuous circle.
After switching to PoS, the future of Ethereum is more promising. Bernstein, a professor at the University of Zurich, said in a research report that the new economic model under the Ethereum merge combined with token destruction could lead to deflation during periods of high demand. Bernstein said the blockchain will “become a leader in the digital asset class” given its economic transformation, scalability roadmap and its vibrant digital economy. Because of its leading market share, market capitalization and liquidity, he expects Ethereum to be widely adopted by institutions.
