Ethereum Co-founder Vitalik Buterin Defends Blockchain Switch to PoS

Vitalik Buterin defends Ethereum switch from Proof of Work to Proof of Stake as the community raises concerns.

Following the growing internal debate within the Ethereum community as to whether the blockchain’s switch from the Proof of Work to the Proof of Stake consensus mechanism was a smart move, the co-founder defended it via his reply to a post made by Amanda Cassatt, founder and CEO of web3 marketing studio Serotonin.

Buterin said,” PoW was also quite centralized.” He added that many did not talk about it because everyone knew it was only a temporary stage until PoS. “And that doesn’t even get into how we probably mostly avoided ASICs only because the upcoming PoS switch meant no incentive to build them.”

Cassatt had earlier mentioned that many members of the Ethereum community are privately expressing their dissatisfaction with the switch to PoS

Ethereum Community Contends Between PoW and PoS

Ethereum’s historic upgrade happened in Sept 2022, when the second-largest cryptocurrency by market value transitioned from the Proof of Work to the Proof of Stake consensus mechanism. 

According to core developers on the Ethereum blockchain, the switch, which was termed The Merge, would introduce the network to a more energy-efficient system, making it more secure and scalable.

Some members of the network accepted the change. For instance, an X user who was part of the conversation between Cassatt and Buterin stated that PoS was best for the blockchain and termed PoW an “energy guzzling casino.” However, according to Amanda Cassatt’s earlier post, the move did not exit some.

Subsequently, Ethereum’s co-founder continued his defense with a picture; he portrayed how Spark Pool took over the mining process in the blockchain, mining over 33% of Ether during the PoW era, leaving others like Ethermine, F2Pool, Nanopool, and others with fewer Ethers.

Buterin asserted that the switch addressed the Application-Specific Integrated Circuits (ASICs), special devices for solving specific cryptographic algorithms to produce new coins.

By transiting to PoS, he mentioned that the project will not need funds to build computers since the current phase meant a faster and less energy-consuming mining process.