Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin responded to critical remarks from some community members who preferred to keep the Proof of Work (PoW) algorithm instead of transitioning to Proof of Stake (PoS). In his post on the X social network, Buterin emphasized that many of the centralization issues in the network were noticeable even with PoW, especially considering the dominance of large mining pools.

He pointed out the distribution of shares in the network, where a significant portion of confirmed transactions was controlled by a few major pools: Spark Pool held a 33% share, Ethermine — 21%, F2Pool — 11%, while Nanopool and Zhizhi.top had 8% and 4% respectively. According to Buterin, many avoided discussing ASIC miner issues, anticipating the upcoming transition to PoS, which does not incentivize their creation.

Buterin also highlighted the advantages of PoS, which are already beginning to show after the network upgrade. Among them is increased environmental sustainability due to a significant reduction in energy consumption. Additionally, PoS contributes to increased scalability and transaction speed on the Ethereum network, as participants with frozen funds have a higher chance of being selected to create new blocks.

The transition of Ethereum to PoS is part of the extensive Ethereum 2.0 upgrade, which has been a significant step towards improving blockchain efficiency, stability, and scalability. These changes are crucial for the long-term development and widespread adoption of blockchain and cryptocurrency technologies.