Nvidia isn’t the only company looking to stop cryptocurrency miners buying-up its GPUs, as it appears Ethereum is also looking to help put a stop to the ongoing graphics card shortage.
Currently, the mining of Ethereum is powered almost exclusively by graphics cards, something that has contributed massively to the ongoing GPU shortage that’s made it near impossible for PC gamers to get their hands on Nvidia RTX 3000 and AMD Radeon RX 6000-series cards.
That could be about to change, as Ethereum has announced that its shifting from a “Proof-of-Work” model to generate new Ether to a new “Proof-of-Stake” model that will require much less computational power to operate.
The change means that, rather than relying on GPU power, the network itself will verify transactions, or blocks, according to their stake in Ethereum – which could, in turn, mean less demand for graphics cards.
“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,” Ethereum said in a blog post. “Ethereum’s power-hungry days are numbered, and I hope that’s true for the rest of the industry too.”
If successful, the new Proof-of-Stake model would cut Ethereum’s power use by up to 99.95%, the foundation claims, and means the cryptocurrency will be almost 7,000 times more energy-efficient than Bitcoin.
While the existing Ethereum network uses about 5.13 gigawatts of power, the Foundation estimates that the network will drop to just 2.62 megawatts after the switch.
“This is not on the scale of countries, provinces, or even cities, but that of a small town (around 2,100 American homes),” the blog post continues.
News of the Ethereum Foundation’s move to make crypto-mining less GPU-intensive comes just hours after Nvidia announced new LHR or ‘Light Hash Rate’ graphics cards that have their Ethereum mining performance slashed to deter miners from buying the GPUs.
Via: PC Gamer