Does anyone know I’d proof of stake ended up being better than proof of work? I dont follow crypto but kept hearing that was supposed to improve things
Crypto is a big deal because it enables grifting and crime, but with how shit payment processors are and their tendency to use their position for censorship, crypto actually would be a potential way of solving that problem IF it werent ludicrously volatile and wasteful. But I have no idea if those problems could really ever be solved, or any progress has been made on those fronts
Yes, Ethereum has been using PoS successfully for over three years and they’re not the only major blockchain to do so. PoS works great these days, still using PoW in 2026 is a deliberate choice.
IMO xmr kinda saved proof of work by optimising their algo for consumer grade CPUs.
CPU mining is much less econimcal than GPU because you can’t fit as many CPUs on a single system. Plus server grade CPUs with lots of smol cores instead of a few big ones hurts it too.
Makes it hard for anyone other than nerds with am extra PC to make money mining, and most of those guys won’t be purposely picking a geographic location with the cheapest/most environmentally harmful electricity source. (More nerds live off of nuclear/solar than datacenters full of miners do)
Did larger blocks ever become popular, since the BTC, BCH split?
At least on the Ethereum ecosystem, it has been increasing slowly until last year. See “Ethereum Mainnet: Historical TPS Capacity” [TPS = transactions per second] graph here: https://www.growthepie.com/quick-bites/ethereum-scaling
Since launch, Ethereum Mainnet has methodically improved efficiency and capacity without compromising decentralization or security. It went through several key upgrades, each contributing to incremental improvements in efficiency and capacity. You can read more about these on our ecosystem page. From 2015 to today, Ethereum scaled from ~0.71 TPS to 24.9 TPS, a 35.0x increase.
After years of steady gains, the pace is set to accelerate. The goal is to scale by ~3x per year with upcoming improvements. This takes today’s 24.9 TPS into the thousands before decade’s end.
There are many other upgrades yet to come. You can also find more details about them here: https://forkcast.org/
But the scaling approach also changed. We are no longer just looking for vertical scaling, like larger blocks, but also via horizontal scaling, which is usually called Ethereum Layer 2, which aims at millions of TPS. That first link also has more details in case you want to dive deeper.
Did the lightning payment network ever become popular?
Don’t think crypto is the solution to replacing payment processors. The distributed networks is going to have enormous difficulty scaling to even a fraction of the number of card payments processed each day.
I didn’t mean for everything, I meant if crypto could ever fix its shit it could be a useful tool for folks affected by the issues with payment processors
But it would have to be stable in value, not suck for making transactions, and not be wildly wasteful
Ethereum is on a clear path to scale. Over the next six years, Ethereum Mainnet throughput is expected to surge toward 10,000 transactions per second (TPS) - roughly 1 gigagas per second - while Layer 2s (L2) collectively push the ecosystem toward million-TPS capacity.
For example, one of the Ethereum L2 rollups mentioned, MegaEth, is expected to have mainnet launch date this month after a 35k TPS stress test.
How?
Ethereum’s strategy combines multiple approaches to sustainably increase capacity while preserving its core principles:
EIP-7938 (Dankrad Feist) - proposes a default, exponential gas-limit growth schedule where clients vote automatically to increase L1 capacity over time (subject to coordination and override). Read the spec here.
Lean Ethereum (Justin Drake) - a design philosophy to streamline consensus, data, and execution, leveraging DAS and real-time zkVMs for “beast mode” performance while staying verifiable. More.
More EIPs - parallel efforts improve execution, networking, and data availability. Slide overview [<- google docs alert].
The aim isn’t raw TPS alone - it’s sustainable, decentralized scale that remains easy to verify.
Does anyone know I’d proof of stake ended up being better than proof of work? I dont follow crypto but kept hearing that was supposed to improve things
Crypto is a big deal because it enables grifting and crime, but with how shit payment processors are and their tendency to use their position for censorship, crypto actually would be a potential way of solving that problem IF it werent ludicrously volatile and wasteful. But I have no idea if those problems could really ever be solved, or any progress has been made on those fronts
Proof of Stake and Proof of Work are two different ways of electing who should append the blockchain with new transactions.
Proof of Work: the one who can waste most energy fastest is most likely to be elected.
Proof of Stake: the one with most money is most likely to be elected.
It’s a bit oversimplified, but that’s the general idea.
This is misleading. Winning the validation election doesn’t give you more power.
The one who is most dishonest gets their stake burned.
How is that misleading, they said nothing about power or being dishonest?
Also, proof of stake sounds like rich get richer scheme (but that was already true for proof of work for a long time)
The word elected implies power. Having more money staked doesn’t give you any more abilities over a capital poor user.
Like all capitalism. An interest bearing bank account is a rich get richer scheme.
In PoS you do still have to do a bit of work for your money (hardware, power, network connection, verification).
Yes, Ethereum has been using PoS successfully for over three years and they’re not the only major blockchain to do so. PoS works great these days, still using PoW in 2026 is a deliberate choice.
IMO xmr kinda saved proof of work by optimising their algo for consumer grade CPUs.
CPU mining is much less econimcal than GPU because you can’t fit as many CPUs on a single system. Plus server grade CPUs with lots of smol cores instead of a few big ones hurts it too.
Makes it hard for anyone other than nerds with am extra PC to make money mining, and most of those guys won’t be purposely picking a geographic location with the cheapest/most environmentally harmful electricity source. (More nerds live off of nuclear/solar than datacenters full of miners do)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethereum#Transition_to_proof-of-stake
I know Etherum made the switch, but I don’t really know about the rest of the ecosystem.
Also since we’re throwing questions around for those who don’t follow the developments anymore:
At least on the Ethereum ecosystem, it has been increasing slowly until last year. See “Ethereum Mainnet: Historical TPS Capacity” [TPS = transactions per second] graph here: https://www.growthepie.com/quick-bites/ethereum-scaling
There are many other upgrades yet to come. You can also find more details about them here: https://forkcast.org/
But the scaling approach also changed. We are no longer just looking for vertical scaling, like larger blocks, but also via horizontal scaling, which is usually called Ethereum Layer 2, which aims at millions of TPS. That first link also has more details in case you want to dive deeper.
As far as I am aware, it’s barely used
Don’t think crypto is the solution to replacing payment processors. The distributed networks is going to have enormous difficulty scaling to even a fraction of the number of card payments processed each day.
I didn’t mean for everything, I meant if crypto could ever fix its shit it could be a useful tool for folks affected by the issues with payment processors
But it would have to be stable in value, not suck for making transactions, and not be wildly wasteful
That won’t be the case for long, see here for some quick bites in case you are interested: https://www.growthepie.com/quick-bites/ethereum-scaling
For example, one of the Ethereum L2 rollups mentioned, MegaEth, is expected to have mainnet launch date this month after a 35k TPS stress test.
How?
Visa crypto chief bets on stablecoin settlement, sees volumes growing