The Merge was executed on September 15, 2022. This completed Ethereum’s transition to proof-of-stake consensus, officially deprecating proof-of-work and reducing energy consumption by ~99.95%.

I don't follow crypto trends so I hadn't heard about this either.

I had to look up proof-of-stake, and for Ethereum apparently is required to stake 32 coins to operate a node. Another google search shows me a single Ethereum coin is just north of $2k USD. So someone mining Etherium today needs to have more than $64k if Etherium to even run a node now?!

[–] pdqcp@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 points 4 hours ago

No, not really, you can start staking with as many as you want, see pooled staking: https://ethereum.org/en/staking/pools/

Staking pools are a collaborative approach to allow many with smaller amounts of ETH to obtain the 32 ETH required to activate a set of validator keys

You earn rewards proportional to the amount you stake

You only need 32 ETH to stake if you want to solo stake / home stake and you don't pool resources with anyone else, see https://ethereum.org/en/staking/solo/

[–] Croquette@sh.itjust.works 2 points 5 hours ago (1 children)

Pay to play baby! Let's reinvent the banking system by doing the same exact shit.

[–] pdqcp@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 points 4 hours ago

Not really to be honest, the power is in the decentralization, permissionless and opensource nature of the system. You can't get that out of the traditional system

Of course not all networks are the same and there are always shit ones out there that compromise on those tenets, but if you do your due dilligence, you will see there is value in some of them

[–] Bristingr@lemm.ee 1 points 6 hours ago

It was 4k per coin. Source: me as I cry with my 2 ETH. 😭