Ethereum creator Vitalik Buterin believes that stacking rollups will not effectively scale Ethereumbut he still has some ideas about the future of Layer 3 scaling. Buterin Questions Rollup Stacking Layer...
Post-Merge Ethereum has now detached itself from the “crypto mining is bad for the environment” narrative, following its transition to proof-of-stake.
The shedding of Ethereum’s energy-intensive proof-of-work (PoW) system is expected to see Ether (ETH) “flow into the institutional world,” according to a number of fund managers and co-founders.
On Sept. 15, Ethereum officially transitioned to a proof-of-stake (PoS) consensus mechanism, which is expected to cut energy consumption used by the network by 99.95%, according to the Ethereum Foundation.
The upgrade effectively ended the need for the Ethereum network to rely on miners and energy-guzzling mining hardware to validate transactions and build new blocks, as these functions are now replaced by validators who “stake” their ETH.
"The merge will reduce worldwide electricity consumption by 0.2%" - @drakefjustin
— vitalik.eth (@VitalikButerin) September 15, 2022
In a statement to Cointelegraph, Charlie Karaboga, CEO and co-founder of Australian fintech company Block Earner said the network’s transition to PoS would “drive the future of money to be more internet-based.”
He said that Ethereum would become “the settlement layer that everyone will accept and trust — especially when the spotlight is shining brighter than ever on the issue of sustainability in crypto mining.”
Markus Thielen, Chief Investment Officer of digital asset manager IDEG said that he had been in discussions with sovereign wealth funds and central banks to help build their digital asset portfolios, but direct investment had often been “voted down due to energy concerns.”
But now that the Ethereum network has transitioned to PoS, this issue is much less of a concern, he said:
“While demand has been strong, the missing link has been an underlying zero-emissions, financial infrastructure. With Ethereum moving to PoS, this clearly solves this last pillar of concern.”
Henrik Andersson of Apollo Capital told Cointelegraph that ESG had become a “big factor” behind institutional investment decision making in the last few years.
Andersson said he believes the 99.95% energy consumption cut on Ethereum would dramatically improve ETH’s ESG score, which in turn would “make it more appealing for institutional investors” over the long-term.
Blockworks co-founder Jason Yanowitz told his 92,900 followers on Sept. 15 that “Green ETH” will be the “best narrative” in crypto’s history, with crypto mining and PoW long plaguing the industry.
Related: How blockchain technology is used to save the environment
Yanowitz noted that until now, the “Bitcoin is bad for the environment” narrative has been “so impactful,” adding it spread like wildfire” and “has probably had the most negative impact on the asset's performance.”
“Most large institutions now have ESG mandates,” said Yanowitz.
“Fidelity, BlackRock, Goldman, etc... whether or not they like it, they now have to consider the environmental impacts of their portfolios.”
But that is now old news for Ethereum, with Yanowitz adding that the most important takeaway from the Merge is that “Ethereum becomes green” which becomes highly appealing to large corporations who have ESG mandates to comply with:
“This will be the best narrative crypto and ETH has ever seen. It will flow into the institutional world, where investors will buy ETH because it satisfies their ESG mandate.”
Moments before the big Ethereum Merge took place, co-founder Vitalik Buterin shared his excitement and PoS vision with the community.
As the clock counted down to the final moments of the big Ethereum (ETH) Merge, co-founder Vitalik Buterin joined the “Ethereum Mainnet Merge Viewing Party” livestream hosted by the Ethereum Foundation to share his final thoughts.
When asked if he was excited about the Merge, Buterin responded that he is "absolutely excited about being exited from the proof-of-work era."
The co-founder went on to say that the historic transition of the network from proof-of-work (PoW) to proof-of-stake (PoS) has been on the agenda for years.
“[It] has obviously been a dream for the Ethereum ecosystem since pretty much the beginning. We started the proof-of-stake research with that blog post on Slosher back in January 2014."
The Merge can be seen as reinventing the laws of physics, according to Buterin. PoW operates with the usage of real-world functionalities such as electricity, hardware and computers. Whereas with PoS, everything is virtualized, “basically letting us create a simulated universe that has its own laws of physics."
Buterin said that among the biggest motivations for the switch are the high costs and the massive amount of energy usage. The Merge is said to drastically reduce energy consumption by 99.95%.
Related: The 'launch of a rocket' — Observers on the future of Ethereum post-Merge
He also pointed out that not only will this be good for the environment, which has been a hot topic among environmentalists towards the crypto space, but also for “non-environmental externalities.” The example was given of the GPU price hike due to ETH mining.
Shortly after Vitalik’s mini spotlight in the livestream, the Merge finally occurred on Sept. 15 at 06:42:42 UTC at block 15537393. The merging of the Ethereum mainnet execution layer and the Beacon Chain’s consensus layer took place at the Terminal Total Difficulty of 58750000000000000000000. After the Merge, the network no longer relies on a PoW consensus mechanism.
Buterin congratulated the community and ushered in the next era of Ethereum via Twitter:
And we finalized!
— vitalik.eth (@VitalikButerin) September 15, 2022
Happy merge all. This is a big moment for the Ethereum ecosystem. Everyone who helped make the merge happen should feel very proud today.
These new optimizations allow developers and users to scale the network in ways not possible or that were unsustainable in the past. This is an important step in pushing the mass adoption of decentralized technologies and onboarding the next billion into the ecosystem.
Right now, we lack full control of our data — and it's siloed. But in the months and years ahead, decentralized identities and reputations could change that.
Amazing things are being built in Web3 — often by pseudonymous individuals who prefer to keep their real-world identity private.
In some ways, this is liberating. It means that anyone can have a chance to get involved in a project and deliver value to the community — irrespective of their background.
But as decentralized identities proliferate, there's one issue that cannot be ignored: Ensuring that there's an easy way for us to verify the reputation of others.
This matters… for many reasons. If you're about to start using a DeFi project created by someone pseudonymous, you'd like a way to know that they're trustworthy and dependable.
If you're reading an article that someone has written online, there should be a way of checking that their past works have been truthful and well-received.
And if you're buying an item from a fellow user on a peer-to-peer marketplace, it's crucial to check that they'll deliver what you've asked for — and on time.
All of this has made reputation in Web3 a hot-button topic. Now, multiple crypto enthusiasts are exploring this concept in great detail — giving us the evidence we need to trust other people without knowing their name and background.
This could be a refreshing antidote to the status quo, where not everything we see online can be believed. Fake testimonials for products are a long-running problem, while bots on Twitter can distort reality and our perceptions of people and companies. We've even seen experiments where fake restaurants have shot to the top of TripAdvisor rankings.
As a concept, DIDs remain at an early stage. But one day, your crypto wallet could store far more than altcoins and NFTs. Instead, they could be a rich background of what you've accomplished — open for all to see. And whereas the profiles that some of us carefully cultivate on Facebook and LinkedIn are centralized, we would see in full control of all of our data.
Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin recently explained how this could work in practice when he unveiled proposals for "soulbound" NFTs. Known as SBTs, he paints a picture of how these digital assets could be used to represent everything from a college degree to a drivers' license — and even provide a modern alternative to credit scores.
Buterin pointed to a proof-of-attendance protocol as an example of technology that could also show promise. POAP NFTs can be used to show that someone was present at a particular event — such as a conference or a concert. While this could have a plethora of exciting use cases in the future, there's one problem that needs to be confronted: Because NFTs can be easily transferred, someone could just buy a token that says they achieved something instead — but products are hitting the market that prevent this.
As we find ways to dutifully record the achievements and attributes that form our reputations online, Buterin argues that a non-transferable type of NFT needs to be created — and this could also deliver tangible improvements to the way governance is achieved in decentralized autonomous organizations.
Moving away from the technical limitations, you may be wondering why digital reputations are necessary in the first place. Well, a big motivation relates to how our data is currently fragmented across a number of social networks and websites — and it's difficult to transfer from one place to another. If you've got a five-star rating on eBay after selling 50,000 items, this stellar reputation cannot easily be transferred to Etsy.
Metis is one of the projects that is focusing on these challenges. The platform has established Reputation Power, which is earned through on-chain achievements. Users can accrue RP by contributing to protocols, DApps and decentralized autonomous companies — whether through deploying smart contracts or minting NFTs.
In the years to come, its vision is creating an environment where someone's reputation can easily be viewed on just one profile — bringing together all aspects of life, from your loved ones and colleagues to the friends you share hobbies with. It's the ultimate way of showcasing your credibility, engagement and trustworthiness — as well as the contribution you've made to the causes you care about.
The project told Cointelegraph:
"Metis' Reputation Power is a portable and composable reputation, unique to users' specific achievements and on-chain history. Reputation Power (or RP) can be collected by users performing on-chain actions such as interacting with smart contracts or voting in governance."
A $100 million was recently established to help cultivate projects that want to build on top of Metis — including DeFi protocols, NFT collections, metaverse platforms and games. And doing so could be appealing for developers, not least because this platform has some of the lowest fees of any layer-two blockchain — helping to make microtransactions affordable.
At the beating heart of this ecosystem is a "solid, scalable, cheap and decentralized" technical infrastructure called Smart Layer 2 — a secure environment that can cope with growing demand from users, with the robustness that the Web3 economy deserves.
There's so much to be excited about — and plenty of work to ensure that Reputation Power becomes valuable for businesses and consumers alike.
Focus remains on mass adoption, and creating infrastructure that'll be used for generations to come.
As the project recently said: "Although the market is going bearish, may the builders never stop!"
Disclaimer. Cointelegraph does not endorse any content or product on this page. While we aim at providing you with all important information that we could obtain, readers should do their own research before taking any actions related to the company and carry full responsibility for their decisions, nor can this article be considered as investment advice.
Cointelegraph identified over six Twitter accounts with a "verified" mark that replicates Buterin’s profile picture, name and profile description.
The hype around The Merge has attracted a swarm of scammers that are actively using verified Twitter accounts to impersonate Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin and dupe investors.
Prominent entrepreneurs, including the world’s richest man Elon Musk, pointed out numerous times the biggest problem of Twitter — bots. However, scammers have evidently amped up efforts to go unnoticed of their ill intentions by using verified profiles.
Cointelegraph identified over six verified Twitter accounts that currently replicate Buterin’s profile picture, name and profile description. The accounts have been actively promoting fake Ether (ETH) giveaways and misleading investors into getting access to their crypto wallets.
The easiest way to identify the fakes is by paying attention to the Twitter handle, also known as the username of the profiles. Recently, fake Twitter profiles impersonating Binance CEO Changpeng Zhao have increased, forcing Musk to publicly call out the problem, as shown below.
And 90% of my comments are bots pic.twitter.com/A7RKyNJZoR
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) September 5, 2022
Occasionally, scammers have also been found to impersonate Ethereum Foundation — trying to gain credibility among the masses. Especially during bull runs and significant events like network upgrades, bad actors find it easy to dupe investors that are typically unaware of scams amid hypes.
This article comes as a warning to crypto investors to help them avoid falling for targetted scams and attacks that threaten to drain funds.
Related: Ethereum ready for The Merge as last shadow fork completes successfully
Equally excited for The Merge, Google added a countdown timer displaying the time remaining for the Ethereum blockchain to transition from proof-of-work (PoW) to a proof-of-stake (PoS) consensus mechanism.
Cointelegraph previously reported on recent Google search data, which revealed that searches for the term “Ethereum Merge” generated a score above 50 several times over the last 30 days, reaching a peak of 100 on Sept. 3.
Ahead of the upcoming Merge, ENS domains have reached the top of OpenSea’s seven-day chart in trading volume.
Ethereum Name Service (ENS) domain names have surpassed Bored Ape Yacht Club (BAYC) as the most traded asset on NFT marketplace OpenSea over the last seven days — seemingly ahead of the Ethereum Merge.
According to OpenSea data, the weekly volume of the Ethereum domain NFTs eclipsed 2,249 ETH at the time of writing, beating out RTFKT Clone X (1,992 ETH) and Bored Ape Yacht Club (1,777 ETH).
ENS domains are a distributed, open and expandable naming system on the Ethereum blockchain that allows users to turn a long string of keys for a crypto address into a single ENS domain such as “vitalik.eth.”
This simplifies the complexity of copying and pasting a lengthy wallet address to send and receive crypto, as users only need to share their domain name like any other ordinary address or identification details.
These domain names can be bought, sold and traded between users in the form of NFTs.
The recent spike in ENS trading volume has seen the average price of ENS items increase 167% from 0.1454 ETH to 0.3895 ETH ($641), while daily volume has risen from 120.7 ETH to 1044.6 ETH.
There are now over 2 million ENS items on OpenSea, spread amongst more than 508,000 owners, with total sales now sitting at 2,682 ENS domains sold.
According to OpenSea, some of the most expensive ENS domain names are 000.eth, which was bought for 300 ETH and is on sale for 5,000 ETH, along with opensea.eth, crypto.eth, google.eth, and nike.eth.
The strong start in September follows an impressive ENS sales month in August, which saw more than 300,000 new “.eth” registrations, and monthly revenue of 2,744 ETH, the third-highest month since ENS was founded in 2018.
August 2022 stats for ENS
— ens.eth (@ensdomains) September 1, 2022
- 301K new .eth registrations (total 2.17m names)
- $4.7m in protocol revenue (all goes to the @ENS_DAO)
- 2,744 ETH in revenue (3rd highest month)
- 34K new eth accounts w/ at least 1 ENS name (total 540k)
- >99% of OpenSea domain vol pic.twitter.com/utU8i4cBMT
The spike in ENS domain name demand comes around a week before the scheduled date of the Ethereum Merge, which is set for Sept. 15.
Related: Ethereum Name Service registrations surge by 200% amid lower gas fees
On Sept. 4, Vitalik Buterin tweeted asked his 4.2 million followers what price tag a five-letter ENS domain name should hold over a 100-year period:
What is a fair price that someone should have to pay to register and unconditionally guarantee ownership of a 5-letter .eth domain for 100 years?
— vitalik.eth (@VitalikButerin) September 4, 2022
The poll found that 49.8% of the 91,130 voters went with “Under $100”, while 18.9% of voters thought “$10,000 or more” could be considered a fair price over a 100-year period.
According to OpenSea, the average price of an ENS domain is 0.3207 ETH.
The creator of Ethereum (ETH), Vitalik Buterin, is suggesting that a decline in the prices of crypto assets has benefits. Buterin says in an interview with former Bloomberg Opinion columnist Noah Smith that the fall in prices is “good” at exposing weaknesses. “I do think that price drops are good at revealing problems that were […]
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