Ethereum is Switching to Proof-Of-Stake
Casper, Ethereum's proof-of-stake model, is coming soon™. Casper will slowly transition Ethereum from Proof-Of-Work to Proof-Of-Stake.
Ice Age
Ethereum developers foresaw the need to switch from the Proof-Of-Work model. Therefore, on September 7, 2015 they initiated the Ice Age. This code exponentially increases the difficulty of mining a block on the chain, thereby forcing a hard-fork and ensuring that the old fork dies out.
What does this mean for Ethereum?
Proof-Of-Stake will make Ethereum more like Steem, which is also Proof-Of-Stake. Instead of traditional POW mining, Hodlers of Ether will be required to vest their coins and validate the network to cash in on newly created coins. The only way to do this on Steem is to be a witness, but on Ether anyone with stake will be able to participate.
Instead of 10% of the reward pool going to miners (witnesses) like it does on Steem, Ether will be giving 100% of the rewards out to miners. Ethereum very well may use this as leverage to end their transaction fees, making it a much more friendly platform to use.
Like Steem, Proof-Of-Stake will fix many of the scaling issues Ethereum is having. Currently, they are operating at 100% capacity and are getting bogged down by transactions. By avoiding the "worthless" hashing work done by the Proof-Of-Work model Ethereum will use all that extra power to scale up and have much faster transactions.
Should Steem be worried?
As I've previously explained, blockchains do not compete with each other. A win for Ethereum is a win for every blockchain. There are many blockchains that are considered superior to Ethereum, but this won't stop it from expanding. Once SMTs are released, Steem might very well be superior to Ethereum in almost every way. However, that still won't stop people from using Ethereum. It is a tried and true blockchain at the top of the market cap.
Check out this article:
Porsche Launches Ethereum Based Blockchain Pilot to Smartify Cars
Why did Porshe use Ethereum when there are theoretically better options out there? It's pretty simple, a big company isn't going to take any risks with a more experimental blockchain. They want a sure thing.
Conclusion
Blockchain tech is evolving at an exponential rate. Just when you think a coin is going under they come out with an upgrade to stay afloat. The Blockchain is far from mainstream. We are all in this together. All blockchains are open source so we are all helping each other, not competing. The Lightning network will increase the value of Bitcoin. Casper will increase the value of Ethereum. STMs will increase the value of Steem. Every blockchain will have the opportunity to look at this new code and incorporate it into their own code-base. Every blockchain benefits.
Here's a few articles I read on this topic:
Ice Age:
https://www.coinstaker.com/ethereum-ice-age/
https://www.cryptocompare.com/coins/guides/what-is-the-ethereum-ice-age/
Casper Testnet:
https://www.trustnodes.com/2017/11/28/ethereums-proof-stake-casper-testnet-nears-launch
Summary:
https://coincentral.com/when-will-ethereum-mining-end/
Proof of stake needs to come faster...
Soon™
June at the earliest but I highly doubt it.
Most of the major chains will likely shift away from PoW over time. It is simply not tenable in the long run.
And by being open-source, Ethereum will show those other blockchains how they can transition without having to figure it all out from scratch.
Also, some of that hardware that was being used to farm worthless hashes can be turned to projects like Golem and actually do real work like Blender CGI rendering. Funny how Golem is an Ethereum-based token.
Have to agree on the moving trend from PoW to PoS. But I am quite not sure why the cryptos do not compete each other. Is the statement based on your experience so far? with the supply and demand logic, coins especially like Ether is vulnerable to compete against its followers in my opinion..
Cryptos are not companies, and even if they were, they are open source. Name two open source projects that compete with each other. There are hundreds of versions of Linux. Hundreds. Imagine there being hundreds of versions of windows or OSX. That kind of diversification simply does not happen with centralized projects.
How can two open source projects compete with each other when both sides can use the code of the other? We are trained to think in terms of competition and zero-sum gain/loss, but this is not how open source projects work.
Read the link in the OP for more info.
Congratulations! This post has been upvoted from the communal account, @minnowsupport, by Edicted from the Minnow Support Project. It's a witness project run by aggroed, ausbitbank, teamsteem, theprophet0, someguy123, neoxian, followbtcnews, and netuoso. The goal is to help Steemit grow by supporting Minnows. Please find us at the Peace, Abundance, and Liberty Network (PALnet) Discord Channel. It's a completely public and open space to all members of the Steemit community who voluntarily choose to be there.
If you would like to delegate to the Minnow Support Project you can do so by clicking on the following links: 50SP, 100SP, 250SP, 500SP, 1000SP, 5000SP.
Be sure to leave at least 50SP undelegated on your account.
Thanks for this information. This is a very good one.
Interesting stuff
Hmm is this in response to @dan's attack on the proof of work concept and ETH owning up to the fact it cant scale the way that it needs to?