99.98% less power: Lighthouse’s first Ethereum and Eth2 merge transaction

Blockchain security provider Sigma Prime has announced its first merge transaction between the two Ethereum networks.

The transaction was made by its Lighthouse client using only Proof of Stake validators, it stated in a March 25 tweet. It added that this was a step towards a 99.98% drop in Ethereum energy consumption, deriving that figure from calculations that compare the current Proof of Work Eth1 with the much more efficient Proof of Stake Eth2.

Sigma Prime stated that it is an exciting achievement but still far from production as it is still a prototype with much more work to do, adding:

“Primarily, you should take this is a signal that Eth1 and Eth2 developers are actively working together on the merge.”

This is not the first time such a feat has been managed, with Sigma Prime pointing out that in August last year the Teku Ethereum client had also demoed a prototype capable of performing any Eth1 transaction in an Eth2 environment.

The transaction is part of the initial steps towards Phase 1.5 in the Ethereum 2.0 upgrade roadmap when a “docking” process will merge Eth1 mainnet with the Eth2 Beacon Chain and sharding system.

The move to Proof of Stake will eliminate the energy-hungry mining operations that currently power Eth1, though the blockchain will still run as a shard of Eth2 once Phase 1.5 is complete.

A discussion on mining, and its power consumption, was spawned on Reddit in response to the Lighthouse development.

Citing the increasing costs of electricity, and graphics processors at the moment due to the global chip shortage, Redditor HighlightAccording98 stated that it’s simpler to profit from staking than mining.

“If I were a miner I would be sitting on a pile of staked ETH from selling my equipment collecting APY and waiting for the merge.”

Currently, staking on Beacon Chain is yielding an APY of 8.2% with 3.6 million ETH already deposited according to the Eth2 Launchpad.