Ahead of the rapidly approaching Ethereum (ETH) Merge on Sept. 15, Ethermine, the world\u2019s largest Ethereum mining pool has unveiled a new staking pool for users. Notably however, it is not available to U.S. miners <\/p>\n
The new service offers Ethermine members a chance to collectively stake their ETH and earn interest on top of their deposits. As little as 0.1 ETH ($159) required to enter. However the smaller the holding, the greater the fee. The platform is currently offering stakers an annual ETH interest rate of 4.43%. <\/p>\n
At the time of writing, 393 Ether worth roughly $626,000 at current prices has been invested into Ethermine’s new pool. <\/p>\n
Staking pools such as these hold significance as they offer competitive interest rates and a lower barriers of entry than solo staking as node operators, which requires at least 32 ETH ($51,000) to operate a node. In comparison, to Ethermine’s interest rate, staking on Ethpool as a node operator garners an annual interest rate of 4.6%. <\/p>\n
The switch to offer staking is something of a pivot for Ethermine which currently operates as a multi-currency mining pool, allowing users to mine ETH, Zcash, Ethereum Classic (ETC), Beam (BEAM), Ravencoin (RVN) and Ergo (ERGO).<\/p>\n
After the merge, ETH mining will be phased out as the network changes from a proof of work (PoW) mining model to proof-of-stake (PoS) staking model. <\/p>\n
At time of writing there are 222,657 active miners on Ethermine that account for a combined hash rate of 261.1 terra hashes per second (TH\/s). After Sept. 15 the pool will only continue to support the PoW mining of Ethereum Classic (ETC), Ravencoin (RVN), Ergo (ERGO), and Beam (BEAM). <\/p>\n
Miner dashboards will have a Merge countdown clock and minerscan keep mining ETH up until the timer hits zero. <\/p>\n
ETH miners will soon be replaced with PoS validators, which could help cut the ETH network consumption by 99%. <\/p>\n
However, some in the ETH miner community have pushed to keep the current PoW consensus mechanism because the shift will make their high powered and costly mining rigs redundant.<\/p>\n
Other high profile members of the crypto community have also been critical, arguing the changes will cause negative impacts beyond the loss of mining.\u00a0<\/p>\n