Recently, Canadian actor William Shatner, who is he is famous for playing the role of James T. Kirk in the Star Trek franchise, congratulated Russian-Canadian programmer Vitalik Buterin, who is the creator of Ethereum, for the successful Merge upgrade.
Around 7:00 a.m. UTC on September 15, Ethereum’s Merge upgrade was completed, which meant that the Ethereum network had transitioned from proof-of-work (PoW) consensus to proof-of-stake (PoS) consensus.
Vitalik called this protocol upgrade “a big moment for the Ethereum ecosystem”:
Three days later, fellow Canadian William Shatner, who is a crypto enthusiast, congratulated Vitalik and his team on this highly impressive achievement, which means that the Ethereum network is now using a tiny fraction of the energy it was using before the Merge, thereby becoming much more environment-friendly:
It is worth noting that this is not the first time that Shatner has interacted with Vitalik on Twitter:
On Merge Day, Amsterdam-based international environmental organization Greenpeace issued a press release, which stated that “as ethereum, the world’s second largest cryptocurrency, dramatically cuts its climate pollution, environmental groups have intensified pressure on bitcoin to meet or beat ethereum’s environmental performance.”
Before the Merge, here is what Etheruem Foundation said about the the change in Ethereum’s energy consumption:
Bitcoin (BTC) $ 67,012.00
Ethereum (ETH) $ 3,126.40
Tether (USDT) $ 1.00
BNB (BNB) $ 577.89
Solana (SOL) $ 173.23
USDC (USDC) $ 0.999996
Lido Staked Ether (STETH) $ 3,123.23
XRP (XRP) $ 0.521777
Toncoin (TON) $ 6.46
Dogecoin (DOGE) $ 0.153783
Cardano (ADA) $ 0.483418
Shiba Inu (SHIB) $ 0.000025
Avalanche (AVAX) $ 37.21
TRON (TRX) $ 0.123137
Wrapped Bitcoin (WBTC) $ 67,061.00
Polkadot (DOT) $ 7.17
Chainlink (LINK) $ 16.33
Bitcoin Cash (BCH) $ 476.92
NEAR Protocol (NEAR) $ 7.92
Polygon (MATIC) $ 0.711739
Litecoin (LTC) $ 83.99
Internet Computer (ICP) $ 13.32
Uniswap (UNI) $ 7.94
Fetch.ai (FET) $ 2.29
Dai (DAI) $ 0.999340
LEO Token (LEO) $ 5.89
Ethereum Classic (ETC) $ 28.64
Hedera (HBAR) $ 0.115384
Pepe (PEPE) $ 0.000010
Render (RNDR) $ 10.11
Aptos (APT) $ 8.61
Wrapped eETH (WEETH) $ 3,242.32
First Digital USD (FDUSD) $ 1.00
Immutable (IMX) $ 2.37
Cosmos Hub (ATOM) $ 8.68
Cronos (CRO) $ 0.125253
Filecoin (FIL) $ 5.87
Mantle (MNT) $ 0.977996
Stellar (XLM) $ 0.108452
Arweave (AR) $ 47.18
Renzo Restaked ETH (EZETH) $ 3,068.50
Stacks (STX) $ 2.07
OKB (OKB) $ 50.24
The Graph (GRT) $ 0.313235
Kaspa (KAS) $ 0.123359
Optimism (OP) $ 2.56
Arbitrum (ARB) $ 1.02
Maker (MKR) $ 2,814.07
Bittensor (TAO) $ 384.02
VeChain (VET) $ 0.035471