TL:DR Breakdown
- The UN declared a climate emergency.
- The world is heading past three degrees celsius.
- Ethereum is the most environmentally friendly coin.
The state of climate emergency could make Ethereum more popular
The United Nations (UN) declares that the country is in a state of emergency today, hoping that countries will act. Speaking at the Climate Ambition Summit, Antonio Guterres pleads that countries with net-zero targets take their pledges seriously.
The Climate Ambition Summit is a virtual gathering that exists to put pressure on countries to place steeper cutbacks in global warming emissions. Over 70 leaders will address the one day summit. The UN leaders are urging countries to act as the environment is in a state of emergency amid fears of destructive global warming occurring.
States promised to keep the global temperature below two degrees celsius, but the promises to hit this goal were empty. The UN leader believes that the world is heading into temperatures of over three degrees celsius.
Mr. Guterres declared that it was undeniable that we had entered into an emergency. People are soon going to have to be more careful about the products they are using and how they contribute to the environment, and cryptocurrencies are not exempt.
The crypto problem
The crypto problem is that for any currency to be mined a certain amount of energy needs to be used. The sources of electricity let out carbon emissions so people will be warier of the energy that they are consuming.
Litecoin is supposed to be the lighter version of Bitcoin. Bitcoin and Litecoin both use proof of work which can be cost-effective and more straightforward but, this system is classed as old and consumes more energy.
Litecoin can technically be mined via a computer but, due to increased competition, most miners have to use more complicated technology that Bitcoin miners once used called the Graphics Processing Unit (GPU). Bitcoin is now mined through ASIC an even more energy-consuming system, and soon Liteocin will catch up as demand increases.
Bitcoin consumes more energy than Litecoin. Bitcoin uses 30 Terrawatt hours (TWh) per year, and Litecoin only uses less than half of this. Between, Ethereum, Bitcoin, and Litecoin, ETH is the one that uses the least amount of energy.
Let us evaluate how efficient Ethereum is.
How Ethereum is the best for the environment
Ethereum 2.0, unlike Bitcoin and Liteocin, does not depend on Proof of Work (PoW) but relies on Proof of Stake (PoS) which is more energy-efficient than the former. The PoS uses sharding which is when the ETH blockchain is divided into several blockchains that operate at the same time.
The split platforms are called shard chains. Each blockchain section can then process way more transactions per second. The PoS process also requires the system to do less work than PoW.
Each ETH 2.0 section will now be able to handle what ETH 1.0, which uses PoW, can handle. Blockchain blocks will be created at a much faster rate via ETH 2.0.
It takes around 10 minutes to mine a block on the Bitcoin Blockchain. ETH 1.0 already takes ten to 20 seconds to mine a block, but it will be even quicker with ETH 2.0.
ETH is far more energy-efficient than Bitcoin and Litecoin, making it an eco-friendly coin. As countries look to cut back on energy consumption to prevent catastrophic global warming, conscious crypto investors may favor ETH over all the other coins.
