A study by Cambridge University’s Center for Alternative Finance (CCAF) found that the Ethereum network has used as much energy as Switzerland during its lifetime.
According to CCAF, the Ethereum network’s energy consumption totaled 58.26 terawatt hours (TWh) between 2015 and the date of the merge – the network’s transition from proof-of-work to proof-of-stake consensus mechanism – in September 2022.
By comparison, Switzerland’s annual electricity consumption for the same period was 54.88 TWh.
According to CCAF, bitcoin’s energy consumption during this period was 143.9 TWh.
The discovery was published in a blog Post By Alexander Neumüller, one of the researchers working for the CCAF.
According to Neumüller, the reduction in energy usage for Ethereum as a result of switching to proof-of-stake has been “amazing”.
Neumüller wrote that this huge difference in energy consumption highlights that one of the “core objectives” of the merge has been achieved.
The Ethereum Foundation has in the past Claimed The researchers stated in their article that the change to proof-of-stake would reduce energy use by 99.9%, and this is in line with the CCAF findings.
The same finding was also shared by CCAF on Twitter, comparing the Ethereum network to a Raspberry and Bitcoin to the Merdeka 118 skyscraper in Malaysia.
The CCAF is best known for estimating the energy consumption of the bitcoin network as well as providing data about where bitcoin mining takes place.
In the past, the Center has found that the US has taken over for China global bitcoin mining centerThe country now accounts for around 38% of the global hash rate of bitcoin.