As Ethereum’s shift to Proof-of-Stake While Proof-of-Stake (PoS) security is under development, Ethereum continues to utilize the Ethash Proof-of-Work (PoW) mining method. However, during the Ethereum Core developer meeting on April 26th, news broke that funding for a ProgPoW audit—designed specifically to counter extremely powerful ASIC miners—has been secured.
Should the audit yield positive results, ProgPoW will be implemented temporarily to secure the ETH 1.0 chain, while the anticipated ETH 2.0 ‘Serenity’ upgrade—expected to introduce sharding, Casper, and Plasma—remains in progress.
The change to the algorithm, which stirred much conversation among the Ethereum community earlier this year, aims to promote decentralization by favoring GPU mining, a more accessible and affordable method compared to ASICs, which are often monopolized by large mining operations. fairly contentious topic Initially, there was uncertainty on how funding for the ProgPoW audit would be sourced from the broader ecosystem. Ethereum Foundation's Jameson Hudson revealed in the latest dev discussion that they finally had enough financial support to engage the selected auditors, the German company Least Authority:
“The funds for the ProgPoW audit are secure. All parties have confirmed their contributions . We hope to start the audit this week or next, pending the signing of some documents and the transfer of funds.”
Hudson further mentioned that they anticipate the audit will conclude by this summer, allowing Ethereum's diverse stakeholders to make a final decision regarding the proposed algorithm change.
Ethereum Core Developer and Ethereum Name Service leader Nick Johnson emphasized earlier this year that the intention behind ProgPoW is to maintain decentralization within Ethereum:
“Ethereum’s initial focus was on creating a mining process where anyone could participate using common hardware. Although differences in regional electricity costs and economies of scale have posed challenges, abandoning ASIC resistance would be detrimental.”
Earlier Discussions on the ‘Unaudited’ ProgPoW
Last month, SpankChain CEO Ameen Soleimani
highlighted during Ethereum Dev Call #58 the potential risks of deploying ProgPoW on Ethereum without completing a thorough audit. contested the possibility In the Ethereum Magicians’ forum, Soleimani expressed:
“While many are eager to wrap this up, as [Greg Colvin] mentioned, I think switching to a non-audited algorithm in a network valued over $10 billion is unlikely to be reasonable.”
Conversely, others like the mentioned Nick Johnson have@gcolvin argued that the insistence on additional audits for ProgPoW is unwarranted:
“Frankly, I believe the ProgPoW audit is probably unnecessary. The algorithm has undergone extensive examination by numerous entities ; the audit might not reveal anything new. Those insisting on an audit do so to create obstacles.” argued However, as the discussions evolved, it was decided to proceed with a full audit of the algorithm. Meanwhile, Least Authority is tasked with identifying any critical vulnerabilities in the project’s code.
If the plan goes ahead, Ethereum researcher Justin Drake projects that future ETH validators might see around 3.2 percent annual returns if approximately 32 million ether is staked.
Naturally, staking more than 32 million ether could follow, as Ethereum's security is tied to the volume of ETH locked in specialized wallets.
Ethereum Staking Coming Into Focus
This month, Ethereum co-creator Vitalik Buterin proposed increasing ETH 2.0 staking rewards.
While what ETH 2.0 validators may ultimately earn remains uncertain, their income prospects now appear more promising.
William M. Peaster, a professional writer and editor specializing in the cryptoeconomy with a focus on Ethereum, Dai, and Bitcoin, has been featured in outlets like Blockonomi, Binance Academy, and Bitsonline. He enjoys exploring smart contracts, DAOs, dApps, and the Lightning Network, and is learning Solidity. Connect with him on Telegram at @wmpeaster.
Ethereum (ETH)’s rise in staking continues, though analysts speculate that in 2025, BinoFi ($BINO) might surpass its accomplishments.
