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Microsoft has filed a patent application filed with the World Intellectual Property Organization for a system that can mine crypto-assets using data collected from humans as they exercise or read an advertisement. Sensors would detect activity associated with specific tasks and convert it into computer-readable data to solve computational problems, in much the same way as a conventional proof-of-work system. Microsoft suggested in its patent application that the system would be fully centralized.

As the Ethereum community anticipates the long-awaited launch of Ethereum 2.0, users are also bracing themselves for a major systematic shift from a proof-of-work model to a proof-of-stake. PoS systems consume exponentially less power and systematically increase decentralization by lowering the barrier of entry to network participation. While the transition from PoW to PoS may be initially difficult for the community, this article proposes five principles to make the transition easier for everyone.

After years of waiting, debating, and delays, Ethereum's pending merge to proof-of-stake finally has a launch date. Now, Ethereums's miners are finally going to have to answer a multi-billion dollar question: what will they mine when Ethereum 2.0 launches?

After eight years of promises the merge of the ETH blockchain into the new Beacon Chain system, formerly ETH2, is scheduled for some time between 15 and 20 September 2022. If it happens this time, then hooray! Proof-of-work mining is a crime against humanity. Using a country's worth of electricity, and thus pumping huge amounts of carbon dioxide into the air, is unconscionable. But that won't suddenly make cryptocurrency good. Proof-of-stake still doesn't fix all the other problems with Ethereum, or cryptocurrency more broadly. For example, decentralisation is always fake. Proof-of-stake pretends to change that - and it just doesn't.

The U.S. White House Office of Science and Technology released a report on Thursday urging the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and the Department of Energy (DOE) to take measurable actions to control high energy consumption by crypto mining proof-of-work mechanism. The report goes on to say that "should these measures prove ineffective at reducing impacts, the Administration should explore executive actions, and Congress might consider legislation, to limit or eliminate the use of high energy intensity consensus mechanisms for crypto-asset mining."

On September 15, 2022 the Ethereum blockchain merged with a special-purpose decentralized ledger called the Beacon Chain, concluding its transition to near-carbon neutrality. Since its inception, Ethereum has been based on the energy-intensive proof-of-work (PoW) system. Now it will run on a proof-of-stake (PoS) system in which miners have been replaced with validators, who pledge, or stake, ether tokens as collateral to verify transactions and accrue interest on the staked assets as a reward. As a result, the network's energy usage should drop by more than 99%, according to the Ethereum Foundation.

Ethereum's co-founder Vitalik Buterin has outlined a five-step process that will bring the smart contract blockchain to the 'Endgame' of Ethereum's development. The end goal would see the network capable of high block frequency and block size as well as the ability to process thousands of transactions per second while remaining sufficiently trustless and censorship-resistant. For example, the plan is to implement sharding to increase the scalability of the blockchain's ability to store and access data.

"Prior to The Merge, Ethereum used to have dozens upon dozens of mining pools dedicating hashrate toward the blockchain network. That has all changed and most of the miners transitioned or plan on transitioning to other Ethash compatible coins like ethereum classic, ERGO, and the new fork ETHW. Now Ethereum blocks are verified by validators and at the time of writing, there are 429,278 validators. However, a great deal of the 13.7 million staked ethereum is held by four known providers."

"Sweat Economy, the 'economy of movement', announced on Tuesday, September 20th, that it successfully launched on NEAR last week. The launch broke some records in the cryptocurrency space as it had the largest ever airdrop to active, opted-in, wallets."

"Kenya's energy production company KenGen wants to offer bitcoin mining companies its surplus geothermal power to help them meet their energy needs."

Unlike blockchains like Bitcoin and Ethereum that rely solely on consensus mechanisms like proof-of-work (PoW) or proof-of-stake (PoS), respectively, Solana combines PoH with PoS to achieve a high-throughput, low-latency system. This unique combination allows Solana to handle thousands of transactions per second, solving significant bottlenecks faced by other chains."