On September 15, Ethereum finally completed its Merge upgrade. In particular, this formalizes the transition of the blockchain from the Proof-of-Work (PoW) mechanism to the Proof-of-Stake (PoS) mechanism. This migration, which caused a lot of ink to flow, brings many advantages to the blockchain. The most publicized one is obviously related to the energy consumption of the network, which will be reduced by 99.95%.
In fact, block verification on the network will now be done using validators that involve ether (ETH) instead of mining. Vitalik Buterin is particularly proud of this major change, which improves the blockchain’s carbon footprint.
Also read: Ethereum Merge: “A long-time dream” for Vitalik Buterin
The latter now also feels invested with a mission: to encourage the other blockchains for the purpose of PoS. Last Friday, during an interview with Ryan Selkis, CEO of Messari, co-founder of Ethereum he asked this to Zcash and Dogecoin. To date, privacy-oriented cryptocurrency and memecoin use the Proof-of-Work mechanism.
Selkis: Should all networks switch to PoS?
“I would say that … as PoS matures I would expect it to increase in legitimacy over time. I hope @zcash move on and I’m optimistic @dogecoin moves to PoS soon,” – VB#mainnet2022
—Messari (@MessariCrypto) September 23, 2022
Selkis: Should all networks switch to PoS? “I would say it should… As the PoS matures, I expect its legitimacy to increase over time. Hope @zcash has migrated and hope @dogecoin will move to PoS soon” – VB#mainnet2022 — Messari (@MessariCrypto) September 23, 2022
As for other blockchains, the Ethereum co-founder was less positive. In particular he said:
“Some of them might, I’m sure at least some of them never will. There may even be an intermediate compromise when some blockchains move to a hybrid type of proof. »
Migration suggested by Zcash
Also present at Mainnet 2022, the CEO of Electric Coin Company, Zooko Wilcox-O’Hearn, did not fail to answer Mr. Buterin’s call. As a reminder, Electric Coin Company is nothing but the company that deals with the development of Zcash. Mr Wilcox-O’Hearn wanted to congratulate Ethereum’s CEO after admitting that he does not believe the move to PoS is possible.
“You emailed me your plan for Ethereum, and I knew, damn. It’s so exciting. And it will never work. And then you and the Ethereum developers proved me wrong. It totally worked. You should be proud of yourself for the rest of your life. »
He then said that his team will continue to follow the evolution of Ethereum after its upgrade, to determine if Zcash will follow the same path. “We literally waited to see what we could learn from Ethereum. I think what we’ve learned is that it really works. “, he said.
