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The tempo of new blocks is fixed, with validators randomly selected to add blocks to the chain. This is rewarded with additional ETH over time. In the case of Ethereum, participants will have to stake 32 ETH (about US $60,000 as of 12 August) to become validators. It asks validators to put up a large sum of a blockchain’s coin or token (the “stake”) for the right to serve as a validator. Proof of stake takes a different approach.

A tracker maintained by the University of Cambridge estimates that Bitcoin alone consumes more energy per year than Finland, Belgium, or the Philippines. Proof of work directly contributes to carbon emissions, unless a mining center relies on clean energy-and that’s often not the case. Stories of mothballed coal plants converted to mining centers underscore the problem. Yet this strength is also a weakness, as computing power requires energy. But the computational power required to achieve this makes a 51 percent attack against a large blockchain, such as Ethereum, very, very difficult. A single participant could defeat proof of work by owning a majority of all mining power (this is known as a “51 percent attack”). The computational difficulty is in fact key to proof of work’s success.

It places cryptocurrency miners in competition to solve a difficult algorithm. Ethereum, like most popular blockchains (including Bitcoin), currently relies on a consensus mechanism called proof of work. “And I hope that’s true for the rest of the industry, too.” How proof of stake solves crypto’s climate crisisīlockchains use a consensus mechanism to maintain integrity without a central authority.

“Ethereum’s power-hungry days will soon be numbered,” says Terence Tsao, Ethereum protocol developer at Prysmatic Labs. In other words, the cryptocurrency will be switching from “ proof of work” to “proof of stake.” This move, which is years in the making, changes how Ethereum maintains consensus-and drastically slashes power consumption.

“The merge” is shorthand for Ethereum’s rapidly approaching switch from one compute-intensive form of blockchain verification to a much less resource-heavy method. The merge is coming, and crypto may never be the same.