Ethereum co-founder and Vitalik Buterin reportedly shared that Ethereum’s proof-of-stake transition could solve blockchain’s rampant energy consumption, which has been gathering criticism lately. 

Specifically, sharing his opinion during an interview at the Hong Kong StartmeupHK virtual conference, Buterin reportedly argued that despite proof of stake is still having an “infancy” nature and is not sufficiently battle-tested compared to the existing proof-of-work model, it has the ability to bring down the chain’s energy consumption by 10,000 times. 

The claim was reportedly made during the time blockchain is receiving a significant amount of criticism for its effect on the surrounding environment, including from a few erstwhile supporters. 

Tesla founder Elon Musk recently spoke completely against his firm’s initiative to add Bitcoin to the list of viable payment measures, claiming that he is not in support of the involvement of fossil fuels in the process of mining Bitcoin. 

In other threads, he further urged Dogecoin to amp up the efficiency level throughout numerous primary metrics. 

Buterin reportedly offered direct answers to comments regarding scalability via a blog post on his website, outlining the issues associated with scaling attempts, via simply tweaking the parameters around blocksize.

In May this year, Buterin additionally believed that Bitcoin’s continued use of proof-of-work will lead to the ultimate outcome of the chain – at the moment the largest in the world – being “left behind”, since users are looking for additional alternatives offering energy-efficiency and environmentally friendly features – a phenomenon he claimed to grant Ether the potential power to surpass Bitcoin as the biggest virtual asset. 

Finally, Buterin reportedly appeared to side with critics, in terms of blockchain needing to have newer, more efficient models; amid the time when the chain’s volume is surging, and turning into a vastly depended-upon computational network.