Start of end of ETH mining: ETH introduces EIP-3554
2 min readETH Core developers are working hard to quickly transform it into a Proof-of-stake (PoS) blockchain. On Thursday, September 29, blockchain ETH received the latest update EIP-3554 (ETH Improvement Proposal) from the London series.
EIP-3554 delays bomb activation
The developers of the ETH blockchain are actively working on a way to redesign the ETH mining process. The biggest challenge, however, was working with difficulty bomb. This bomb concept refers to increasing the level of mining and the time required to mine new blocks in the ETH blockchain. Tim Beiko, ETH’s protocol developer coordinator, told CNBC:
“It is a mechanism in Ethereum that will make its mining exponentially more difficult. It’s as if we’re artificially adding miners to the grid, which will increase the difficulty, and therefore it will be harder for all the other miners in the grid to extract the block. “
The implementation of EIP-3554 delays the activation of the bomb by six months.
The current ETH blocking time is approximately 13 seconds. According to Tim Beiko, Ethereum’s blocking time could increase by 487% five months after the bomb, which adds 64 seconds. This will lead to an “ice age” era and ETH will be unminable.
Transition to PoS – ETH 2.0
The two largest blockchain platforms, BTC and ETH, follow the consensus Proof-of-Work (PoW) model. This includes extracting new blocks and adding them to the blockchain network.
PoW models have been criticized for requiring state-of-the-art hardware and high power consumption. In addition, blockchains accepting these models also faced scalability problems. ETH is therefore moving to the widely scalable Proof-of-Stake (PoS) model.
The ETH development team also lowered the limit of staking ETHs so that anyone could become a node validator. Previously, validators had to stake at least 1,500 ETH worth an incredible $ 4.2 million. A later proposal reduced it to just 32 ETH, which currently costs around $ 90,000. “It’s still not a trivial amount, but it’s a much more accessible system,” Beiko said.
Over the last few months, the ETH community has been testing PoS workflows at the Beacon chain. However, ETH developers face several challenges with implementing PoS. Beiko said:
“We knew there would be a lot of technical work to address things like the increased centralization we see in other proof-of-stake systems. We have achieved this with the Beacon chain, where there are one or two orders of magnitude more validators than in any other proof-of-stake network. ”
Of course, the Ethereum mining community is not happy with that, because PoS ETH 2.0 will jeopardize their financial interests. After the complete transition to the PoS platform, revenues from ETH mining will fall to zero.
