Before the Ethereum (ETH) meltdown approaches on September 15, Ethermine, the largest Ethereum mining pool in the world, has introduced a new staking pool for users. However, it is not available to US miners.
The new service offers Ethermine members the opportunity to collectively stake their ETH and earn interest on their deposits. As little as 0.1 ETH ($159) is required to enter. However, the smaller the holding company, the higher the commission. The platform currently offers stakers an ETH annual interest rate of 4.43%.
At the time of writing this article, 393 Ether worth $626,000 at current prices have been invested in the new Ethermine pool.
These types of pools are important because they offer competitive interest rates and a lower barrier to entry than solo node operators, which require at least 32 ETH ($51,000) to operate a node.. Compared to the Ethermine interest rate, staking on Ethpool as a node operator earns an annual interest rate of 4.6%.
The switch to offer staking is a kind of switch for Ethermine which currently operates as a multi-currency mining pool.allowing users to mine ETH, Zcash, Ethereum Classic (ETC), Beam (BEAM), Ravencoin (RVN), and Ergo (ERGO).
After the merger, ETH mining will be phased out as the network transitions from a proof-of-work (PoW) mining model to a Proof-of-Stake (PoS) model.
At the time of writing, there are 222,657 active miners on Ethermine representing a combined hash rate of 261.1 terra hashes per second (TH/s). After September 15, the pool will only continue to support PoW mining of Ethereum Classic (ETC), Ravencoin (RVN), Ergo (ERGO) and Beam (BEAM).
It’s the end of the mining era
Miner boards will have a countdown clock from the merger and miners will be able to keep mining ETH until the timer hits zero.
ETH miners will soon be replaced by PoS validators, which could help reduce ETH network consumption by 99%.
Nevertheless, some members of the ETH mining community have pushed to keep the current PoW consensus mechanism because the change will make their high powered and expensive mining equipment redundant.
Other high-profile members of the cryptocurrency community have also been critical, arguing that the changes will cause negative impacts beyond the loss of mining..
The current PoW system is an energy-intensive process and in which miners harness vast amounts of computing power to solve complex puzzles, validate transactions, and earn ETH rewards.
Under the PoS model, participants or validators lock fixed amounts of cryptocurrencies in a smart contract on the blockchain; your stake helps to secure and decentralize the network.
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