The end of Ethereum mining was scheduled for the same month of September, a date that was a bit up in the air as there had been delays before, but it was finally met. The merger, also known as “The Merge” in English, was successful and led to the transition of what we know as “Proof-of-Work” (PoW) to “Proof-of-Stake” (PoS).

In direct translation, both are marked as “proof of work” and “proof of stake”. This transition represents a radical change in the way of obtaining Ethereum, because until now we could obtain it by mining with graphics cards, and since this connection, this path is completely closed. Ethereum mining is a thing of the past and this should put an end to getting a lot of graphics cards for mining, finally freeing the general consumer market from this problem that has already caused two crises in the graphics card industry.

You must be wondering how it will be possible to get Ethereum now, and the answer is very simple, mainly in two ways, by buying the said cryptocurrency with real money or transaction verification based on the number of cryptocurrencies we have in the system, that is, based on our own participation. It is a topic that still raises some doubts, so we will have to wait to see how it develops in order to judge it in a more appropriate way.

What does this mean for users?

It’s too early for an in-depth and well-informed assessment, but the end of mining will severely limit access to Ethereum and likely ends by reducing the creation of new units said cryptocurrencies. It also gives more value and weight to those users who have more Ethereum and that could contribute minimize sales and massive liquidations.

For large investors who have a huge amount of Ethereum, this change will it will be very positivewhile for small investors, due to what we mentioned, due to the weight of the proof-of-stake model, it could be a significant complication to achieve good governance of their cryptocurrencies.

From an environmental point of view, this is an important advance, because in theory, by eliminating the mining of Ethereum network power consumption has been reduced huge. Undoubtedly, an important first step in the evolution of Ethereum, which has more long-awaited changes ahead that will improve key aspects such as the number of transactions that can be processed on the network and the controversial issue of commissions.

If you want to dive into this issue, I invite you to read the article that CoinDesk shared on this topic, which is very comprehensive and goes quite deep into the topic of participation. Thanks to him, we could know to be a validator we need to have at least 32 Ethereum units in a fixed direction. These cannot be bought or sold.