After The Merge, can Ethereum erase its historic emissions, too?
There’s a new effort to tackle Ethereum’s legacy of pollution, even after the cryptocurrency drastically reduced its greenhouse gas emissions this year. Ethereum software company ConsenSys launched a new initiative alongside more than a dozen tech and Web3 companies yesterday during the United Nations climate summit taking place in Egypt. The aim of the initiative, called the Ethereum Climate Platform, is to “redress and counteract” the climate pollution Ethereum left behind from its inception in 2015 until this year.
In September, Ethereum completed The Merge — a highly anticipated software update that slashed the blockchain network’s electricity use by 99.988 percent. But prior to that update, Ethereum used an enormously energy-hungry...