How Ethereum's September Upgrade Could Fix NFT's Energy Issue
A lot of hype has arisen from the much-anticipated Ethereum upgrade, known simply as "The Merge," and this improvement will end all arguments about Ethereum's environmental impact, and to that extent the impact of NFTs. This improvement has been in the works for many years now, and is part of a much larger path to a better blockchain.
Ethereum has brought many great innovations to the blockchain industry, including the coding standard for non-fungible tokens (NFTs). However, since Ethereum was the first blockchain to implement programs that enable these innovations, it also uses the same mechanism as Bitcoin for validating transactions, called "mining." Because this process is energy-intensive, it results in anything that runs on Ethereum also being energy intensive, which inspires the argument that NFTs harm the environment. At the same time, it is often cheaper and better to use green energy for crypto mining, and many Bitcoin miners will seek out green energy sources for this reason, but that often gets overlooked when cryptocurrency mining's impact on the environment is brought up.
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The Ethereum Foundation has spent years working towards its solution, "Ethereum 2.0," and by the end of September, Ethereum will have fully merged with Ethereum 2.0. This new transaction validation mechanism relies on users "staking" their ETH to participate in transaction validation, which earns them an interest rate on that ETH, and will no longer require cryptocurrency mining. While not perfect, this mechanism is far better for energy consumption and transaction efficiency, and as part of the roadmap to Ethereum 2.0 will set the stage to begin scaling
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