The last stand of ETH miners : Ethereum hashrate soars, amid NFT madness

By: Bharggavi Ssayee

September 3, 2021 7:04 AM

Network hash rate hits new record after dropping sharply after May 2021. Network continues to receive enough hash power, as progress to Ethereum 2.0 slowly pushes miners out the door . Release

End of migration for Ethereum miners

According to data from The Block, the average 7-day Ethereum hashrate hit a new high on August 26, 2021, surpassing the 600 Terahashes per second (TH / s) mark, a level it had approached in May. 2021. This hashrate subsequently dropped to as low as 465 TH / s on July 6, 2021.

This sharp decline was due in large part to the hunt for minors in China, who then had to stop their exploitation and move to other countries. Bitcoin's hash rate (BTC) had also been the victim of this crackdown, but the hashrate has been on the rise again recently, with a rebound signaling the end of the migration of miners.

Ethereum record hashrate in an extraordinary context

Ethereum's hashrate hits a new high, as blockchain activity increases with the continued development of decentralized finance, but also with the NFT fever in the summer of 2021. To name just a few cases illustrating this " madness ”around NFTs, the work Fidenza # 313 from the Art Blocks platform recently sold for 1,000 ETH, or approximately $ 3.3 million at the time of sale. And those NFTs sold or valued at 7 digits or more are not uncommon. The Feisty Doge, the NFT containing the photo of Dogecoin's Shiba Inu (DOGE), is estimated to be worth $ 110 million thanks to a splitting strategy.

This new record reached by the hashrate of Ethereum is all the more interesting, given that it comes just a few weeks after the London update which implemented the burn (destruction) of part of the costs on the network. , and which should theoretically have a negative impact on the incomes of minors. They did not welcome the arrival of this new mechanism. Based on the current hashrate, the miners have not left the network, although future upgrades will see a switch from proof of work to proof of stake, a step forward that will mark the end of mining on Ethereum.

Will miners increase their hash power more and more as the date of this proof-of-stake switch approaches? They would do their utmost to earn more Ethers than in recent years, a motivation that could be explained by the potential of Ether which would even present a better trading setup than Bitcoin according to a former Goldman Sachs executive.