Australian company Sigma Prime, developer of the Lighthouse client of Etherium, announced the first "merge transaction" between Etherium 1.x and Etherium 2.0. According to a Sigma Prime Twitter post, the first "merge transaction" was performed by the Lighthouse client using only Proof-of-Stake (PoS) validators. As the company claims, this is the first step in reducing Etherium's power consumption by 99.98%. The firm got this figure from calculations that compare the current PoW Eth1 algorithm to the more energy-efficient PoS Eth2.
Sigma Prime states that this is an exciting achievement, but still far from the production phase, as it is a work-intensive prototype: "First of all, you should view this as a signal that the developers of ETH1 and ETH2 are actively working together on the merger. Last August, the developers of the Teku client for Etherium also demonstrated a prototype capable of executing any Eth1 transaction in an Eth2 environment. The Sigma Prime transaction is one of the first steps toward phase 1.5 in the Ethereum 2.0 roadmap, when the two versions of the network must "meet." After the launch of Phase 1.5, the Ethereum 1.0 chain will become the Ethereum 2.0 shard on PoS. At that point, the full functionality of the ETH1 chain, including the use of crypto-assets, will become available in ETH2 without compromising data integrity. The move to PoS will eliminate the power-intensive mining that currently powers ETH1. In response to Lighthouse's achievement, a discussion about mining and its energy consumption began on Reddit. Citing rising power and video card costs due to a global chip shortage, Reddit user HighlightAccording98 stated that it is easier to profit from steaking than from mining. "If I were a miner, I'd lock in a bunch of ETH from selling my hardware, make an income, and wait for the merger." According to Eth2 Launchpad, Etherium 2.0 validators are now earning an annual revenue of 8.2%, and 3.6 million ETH has already been blocked for steaming. Recall that Etherium developer Mikhail Kalinin recently published a paper proposing a faster merging of the ETH1 and ETH2 blockchains and a correspondingly faster transition to PoS.