摘要
The year 2022 was a milestone for cryptocurrencies-and not just because investors suffered record losses of more than2 × 1012USD and the arrest on fraud charges of the founder of one of the biggest exchanges [1,2]. Last year also stands out because, for the first time, a major cryptocurrency took action to curb its enormous energy appetite. On 15 September 2022,Ethereum, the cryptocurrency with the second highest market capitalization, changed its operating algorithm, cutting its electricity use by more than 99% [3]. Dubbed the Merge, this transformation dispensed with mining, the energy intensive computational process that generates new cryptocurrency tokens for users to spend or trade.
