Plan to cut Ethereum energy use sees miners switch cryptocurrencies

The Merge, a long-awaited update which promised to slash Ethereum’s vast energy consumption, has instead pushed miners towards other cryptocurrencies

By Matthew Sparkes

A radical update last week to the Ethereum cryptocurrency was supposed to reduce energy consumption by 99 per cent, but the savings have so far failed to materialise as miners evicted from the network flock to other currencies. Estimates suggest that at least 50 per cent of energy hungry mining hardware formerly running Ethereum has now been put to use mining other coins.

In a long-awaited and much-delayed update called the Merge, Ethereum shifted from a proof of work (PoW) model – where …