Bitcoin’s Proof of work (PoW) consensus mechanism is hotly debated these days due it its energy consumption. Proof of stake (PoS) is a different way to skin the consensus cat.

While it’s less proven to work in the real world (Bitcoin’s uptime and security over the network’s 12-year lifespan is perhaps its greatest asset), PoS is quite promising and we’re starting to see the fruit of that promise with early numbers from Ethereum 2.

Ethereum will be completing the transition to Proof-of-Stake in the upcoming months, which brings a myriad of improvements that have been theorized for years. But now that the Beacon chain has been running for a few months, we can actually dig into the numbers. One area that we’re excited to explore involves new energy-use estimates, as we end the process of expending a country’s worth of energy on consensus.