Look I get it, some of you don't really care to use crypto while others want to find a way to get everything they own on the blockchain. No matter how you feel there is one central fact about crypto, it can be an environmental nightmare.
Built on a system called "Proof of Work," the idea that money can be backed by the cryptographic math that powers it's security. The Proof of Work system has users solve a never-ending set of math problems on the network based on "blocks" of information, transactions, and other data. Increasing in complexity over time, these problems ensure that you can't trick the system into letting you say you own the money and tokens actually owned by someone else. Once a block is "mined" it becomes a permanent, un-editable link in the chain of blocks (aka The Blockchain) that is at the core of a particular coin. The people that mine these blocks are rewarded with brand new, never before used coins.
That's the rub. Do you want coins? Gotta' mine blocks. Wanna mine blocks? You have to solve this ever-increasingly difficult math problem. Wanna solve this math problem? Get powerful computing power or else you won't be able to solve it before anyone else. Seeing as graphics cards are the most powerful computing devices wildly available it was not long before they were co-opted for crypto mining. This has led to global supply issues. Manufacturers want to make a powerful card for great graphics, but that means they need to make them able to crunch more numbers, making them more desirable to miners, and so on. This has been the world we have been stuck in, graphics cards being grabbed up and used for greed instead of gaming. The only ones that have been able to easily get graphics cards are people trying to make money with no regard for anything other than their potential bottom line, and that's not the worse part.
"Proof of Work" means just that, that you are doing more work on the network than anyone else and that means if you want to make money you will need to solve more and more math than everyone else. So to stay in the game you need to add another mining system... and another... and another... and before long your mining rigs are guzzling enough energy to power a third-world village. The Ethereum network alone used enough electricity to power 1,597,222 American households. But that ended today.
A few hours ago Ethereum, also known as Eth, switched from the Proof of Work system to "Proof of Stake," a completely different and vastly more responsible model. Like Proof of work, every transaction is still being recorded in blocks on the blockchain. While there is still math scrambling things up and keeping the chain secure, blocks do not need to be mined, they are signed and confirmed randomly by people that have staked a significant amount of the currency in an inaccessible state. Instead of a gold rush, we are now looking at a stock market where you gain what is kind of equivalent to random interest. The best part is that no mining means no solving math. GPUs are now useless to the system that powers every major NFT platform and that's great, no matter your opinion of monkey jpgs. Analysts at the Crypto Carbon Ratings Institute (CCRI) are anticipating an energy reduction of 99.998% and likened it to the difference in size between the Eifel Tower and a Lego Minifig.
Only time will tell the social implications of this. Are Cryptos (or at least Eth) ok now? Will you finally be able to get your hands on a current gen-graphics card at a price that won't make you cry? I don't know, but I do believe that if this is a success it will trigger a wave of positive change that, while not fixing the issues of scams and art theft, will at least lead to a greener future and hopefully allow people the choice whether they want to be affected by crypto in their lives or not. What are your thoughts on this? Let's start a conversation in the comments below or in The Scynewave Discord Server.
