With the much anticipated Ethereum Merge happening on September 15, the world’s largest Ethereum mining pool, Ethermine, has announced a new staking pool for Ethereum users on its platform. Unfortunately, the services have not been rolled out to U.S. miners.
The new staking pool provides opportunities for Ethermine users to collectively stake their ETH and earn rewards per their contribution to the pool. Nevertheless, users need a minimum of 0.1 ETH, approximately $159, to participate. At the time of writing this report, Ethermine is offering an annual interest rate of 4.43% for this service.
While the company only announced the launch of the new staking pool a few hours ago, over 393 Ethereum, worth nearly $626,000, have been deposited in the new mining pool.
What experts find unique about Ethermine’s new staking pool is the competitive interest rate it offers, along with the ease of entry. With the previous solo staking nodes, Ethereum users interested in staking need a minimum of 32 Ethereum to participate in a node.
The switch to a staking protocol has been one of the cardinal goals of Ethermine, which has hitherto offered a multi-currency mining pool where users can stake different digital assets, including ETH, Ravencoin, Beam, Ethereum Classic, and Ergo.
The Ethereum Merge and what’s to come
While a lot is coming with the proposed Ethereum Merge happening on September 15, the most significant one is the phasing out of ETH mining as the network moves from the Proof of Work mining model to the Proof-of-Stake protocol.
There are currently 222,657 active miners on Ethermine. But after the Ethereum Merge happens in September, mining for Ethereum will be phased out while the company will continue to support the PoW mining for other digital assets supported by the platform.
There has been a call for Ethereum to move from PoW to Proof of Stake for some time now. Analysts are looking to see how the market reacts to the merger, which is just a few weeks away.
