| Proof of stake Ethereum is very similar to 5G, yes there is real technology, yes it's 'working' in some capacity now. But you really shouldn't plan on it reaching you any time soon. The ETH2 'beacon chain' is a meta-chain that's supposed to checkpoint a bunch of 'sub chains' for scalability. They have launched this beacon chain. But it doesn't do anything other than mint ETH2 tokens and operate their proof of stake consensus system. AKA it's another blockchain, different than ETH1 and it doesn't even move transactions yet. It's got a novel POS system to it's name, that's not nothing, but that is all it has at the moment. What does a 'sub chain' actually look like to interact with? How do you coordinate with many of them? All these questions have answers in theory, but not answers in solid production ready interoperable code. 'Proof of stake Ethereum' only happens if these questions are figured out and then ETH1 is somehow brought under the beacon chain's governance. Which is a whole different kettle of fish than a greenfield subchain. Exactly how this is to happen... well I haven't even seen anything credible on this. As far as I can tell it's not even seriously being worked on yet. So we may, if things go well, have another blockchain calling itself ETH2 that is proof of stake by the end of this year. But that won't cause ETH1 to stop wasting electricity or gracefully move it's economic activity to a proof of stake system. Moving billions of dollars of economic activity out of the hands of miners (who have every incentive to screw it up) and into the hands of a proof of stake validator set while at the same time not significantly disrupting said system or opening up new vulnerabilities is not trivial. tl;dr Proof of stake Ethereum is possible, but there definitely isn't a rush order on it. I would bet on Ethereum miners still being around 2-3 years from now. |