Ethereum Goes Green, Crypto Gurus Expect Greater Institutional Adoption

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On September 15, Ethereum has officially moved to a PoS or proof-of-stake consensus mechanism, completing the process known to the crypto community as ‘The Merge’. The shift from Ethereum’s previous proof-of-work (PoW) consensus mechanism — which happened to be massively energy-intensive — is expected to cut the network’s energy use by as much as 99.95 percent, according to the Ethereum Foundation. gurus say so, this move will prove important for Ether to achieve greater institutional endorsements. This belief is quite valid, considering that Ethereum’s upgrade to the PoS system has now ended Ethereum’s need for miners and their energy-intensive mining equipment to validate transactions and add new blocks to the chain. These tasks will now be picked up by ‘validator’ nodes, which will be selected based on the amount of ETH they have staked. As Charlie Karaboga, CEO and co-founder of Australian fintech company Block Earner put it in a statement, Post-Merge Ethereum has the potential to “drive the future of money to become more Internet-based.” He further added that Ethereum may now very well become the settlement layer that people can more easily trust, especially with “…the spotlight shining brighter than ever on the issue of sustainability in crypto mining.” As many crypto experts have noted, until now the “Bitcoin is bad for the environment” narrative has had a major negative impact on crypto’s prospects as an asset class. While crypto has been in demand almost since Bitcoin’s inception over a decade ago, institutional investors have still shied away from crypto assets before, citing this energy inefficiency as the reason for doing so. Most large global institutions must carefully consider the environmental impacts their portfolios may have, and their ESG mandates will not allow any asset that may be environmentally troublesome. But with Etherum now moving to proof-of-stake and building a low-emission economic infrastructure, this concern has been completely removed from the crypto investment scenario. The merger has made ETH a “green” crypto, making it attractive to the same big companies since it satisfies their ESG mandates.As Blockworks co-founder Jason Yanowitz suggested on September 15th, after detaching from PoW’s mining process entirely, this green ETH might just become the ‘best narrative’ in crypto history.Shashank is the founder of yMedia. He ventured into crypto in 2013 and is an ETH maximalist. Twitter: @bhardwajshash