Technology

Ethereum mining will soon be obsolete, as ‘London’ update moves key deadline to December

Published

4 years ago

August 5, 2021

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Somewhat buried in ethereum’s big software makeover that rolled out Thursday is a code update known as Ethereum Improvement Proposal 3554, or EIP-3554 for short. It threatens to hasten the end of ethereum mining as we know it.

Since its launch, the ethereum community has talked about overhauling the way that it mints ether, which is the token associated with the ethereum blockchain. But getting people to make the change is going to require a push – and that push is something known as a difficulty bomb.

“It’s a mechanism in ethereum that makes it exponentially harder to mine,” said Tim Beiko, the coordinator for ethereum’s protocol developers. “It’s like we’re artificially adding miners on the network, which raises the difficulty, making it harder for every other miner that’s on the network to actually mine a block.”

EIP-3554 moves up the detonation date of that difficulty bomb by six months to December. Once it goes off, it will essentially make ethereum unmineable.

Ethereum 2.0

Cryptocurrencies like ethereum and bitcoin regularly receive flack for the process of mining, which is how new coins are generated. Both currently use a so-called “proof-of-work” mining model, where machines solve complex math equations to create new coins. This makes it impossible for any centralized body to create new coins arbitrarily – there’s no equivalent of a central government to print new dollars – which crypto enthusiasts believe helps preserve the value of these cryptocurrencies.

However, this effort requires significant energy to power the computers used to perform the calculations, which has drawn criticism from outsiders concerned about energy shortages and carbon emissions.

The ethereum community has coalesced around the idea of migrating from proof-of-work to “proof-of-stake,” which requires users to leverage their existing cache of ether as a means to verify transactions and mint new tokens. This will still limit the amount of new coin created, but without requiring the energy used to run massive banks of computers to solve math equations.

Beiko tells CNBC the original proposal required these so-called validators to have 1,500 ether, a stake now worth around $4.2 million. To lower the barrier to entry, the new proof-of-stake proposal would only require interested users to have 32, or about $90,000.

“It’s still not a trivial sum, but it’s a much more accessible system,” said Beiko.

Since December 2020, the ethereum community has been testing out the proof-of-stake workflow on a chain called Beacon.

Though proof-of-stake has been the plan for ethereum since the outset, developers have pushed back the rollout, because they had seen serious flaws in previous implementations. Beacon solves these problems, according to Beiko.

“We knew that there would be a lot of technical work to address things like the increased centralization that we see in other proof-of stake-systems,” he said. “We’ve achieved that with the Beacon chain, where there’s one or two orders of magnitude more validators…than any other proof-of-stake networks.”

Migrating the entire ethereum ecosystem to Beacon, an upgrade being dubbed “ethereum 2.0,” is the next step in the process. Getting everyone on board with the move is where the difficulty bomb becomes significant.

The Ice Age

This isn’t the first time in ethereum’s history that a difficulty bomb has detonated.

It’s happened a few times, including in 2017, 2019, and again last year.

When a difficulty bomb detonates, it floods the system with artificial miners, driving up the mining difficulty. That means new blocks will appear more and more slowly on the network. “If you increase the difficulty really, really quickly, it’s just not profitable for new miners,” explained Beiko.

But each time it’s gone off, the community has reset the clock in order to bring the difficulty level back down to normal levels.

Etherscan.io

While you don’t need a bomb to go off to roll out proof-of-stake mining, it certainly helps move things along by closing the on-ramp to proof-of-work mining. Beiko calls it more of a stopgap measure.

In essence, the point of the difficulty bomb is to force miners and node operators to upgrade their software after a predetermined amount of time has passed, according to Nic Carter, Castle Island Ventures general partner and Coin Metrics co-founder.

In December, if the deadline for detonation isn’t pushed back, the bomb will go off, and you’ll see another parabolic rise in difficulty, like the ones pictured in the chart above. But this time, developers won’t be rewinding the clock.

It will be the start of ethereum’s proof-of-work “Ice Age.”

Not everyone’s happy

While the upgrade to ethereum 2.0 has a lot of backers, not everyone is happy about the change.

“There are some miners who are against it, but it’s in their financial interest to be against it,” said Beiko.

Once the protocol has fully migrated to a proof-of-stake model, there won’t be any revenue to be made from ethereum mining.

At that point, miners have a few options for what to do next.

There are a lot of other chains that support GPU-based mining, so miners could simply choose to start mining other cryptocurrencies.

They could also decide to just shut down mining operations entirely and sell their mining equipment. Beiko expects to see a lot of that.

“We’ve also seen many mining farms and mining pools on ethereum start to get into staking,” he said.

“We’ve seen mining pools use their profits to set up validators on ethereum. We’ve also seen them offer pooling services for their users who might not have 32 ether but still want to validate the network.” So even if you don’t have $90,000 parked in ether, you still might be able to keep some skin in the mining game.

Technology

Cognition to buy AI startup Windsurf days after Google poached CEO in $2.4 billion licensing deal

Published

3 hours ago

July 14, 2025

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Cognition to buy AI startup Windsurf days after Google poached CEO in .4 billion licensing deal

In this photo illustration, a man seen holding a smartphone with the logo of US artificial intelligence company Cognition AI Inc. in front of website.

Timon Schneider | SOPA Images | Sipa USA | AP

Artificial intelligence startup Cognition announced it’s acquiring Windsurf, the AI coding company that lost its CEO and several other senior employees to Google just days earlier.

Cognition said on Monday that it will purchase Windsurf’s intellectual property, product, trademark, brand and talent, but didn’t disclose terms of the deal. It’s the latest development in an AI talent war, as companies like Meta, Google and OpenAI fiercely compete for top engineers and researchers.

OpenAI had been in talks to acquire Windsurf for about $3 billion in April, but the deal fell apart, and Google said on Friday that it hired Windsurf’s co-founder and CEO Varun Mohan. Google is paying $2.4 billion in licensing fees and for compensation, as CNBC previously reported.

“Every new employee of Cognition will be treated the same way as existing employees: with transparency, fairness, and deep respect for their abilities and value,” Cognition CEO Scott Wu wrote in a memo to employees on Monday. “After today, our efforts will be as a united and aligned team. There’s only one boat and we’re all in it together.”

Cognition didn’t immediately respond to CNBC’s request for comment. Windsurf directed CNBC to Cognition.

Cognition is best known for its AI coding agent named Devin, which is designed to help engineers build software faster. As of March, the startup had raised hundreds of millions of dollars at a valuation of close to $4 billion, according to a report from Bloomberg.

Both companies are backed by Peter Thiel’s Founders Fund. Other investors in Windsurf include Greenoaks, Kleiner Perkins and General Catalyst.

“I’m overwhelmed with excitement and optimism, but most of all, gratitude,” Jeff Wang, the interim CEO of Windsurf, wrote in a post on X on Monday. “Trying times reveal character, and I couldn’t be prouder of how every single person at Windsurf showed up these last three days for each other and for our users.”

Wu said that the acquisition ensures all Windsurf employees are “treated with respect and well taken care of in this transaction.” All employees will participate financially in the deal, have vesting cliffs waived for their work to date and receive fully accelerated vesting for their, according to the memo.

“There’s never been a more exciting time to build,” Wu wrote.

WATCH: Google snatches Windsurf CEO after OpenAI deal dissolves

Technology

Musk’s xAI faces European scrutiny over Grok’s ‘horrific’ antisemitic posts

Published

3 hours ago

July 14, 2025

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Musk's xAI faces European scrutiny over Grok's 'horrific' antisemitic posts

The Grok logo is being displayed on a smartphone with Xai visible in the background in this photo illustration on April 1, 2024.

Jonathan Raa | Nurphoto | Getty Images

The European Union on Monday called in representatives from Elon Musk‘s xAI after the company’s social network X, and chatbot Grok, generated and spread anti-semitic hate speech, including praise for Adolf Hitler, last week.

A spokesperson for the European Commission told CNBC via e-mail that a technical meeting will take place on Tuesday.

xAI did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Sandro Gozi, a member of Italy’s parliament and member of the Renew Europe group, last week urged the Commission to hold a formal inquiry.

“The case raises serious concerns about compliance with the Digital Services Act (DSA) as well as the governance of generative AI in the Union’s digital space,” Gozi wrote.

X was already under a Commission probe for possible violations of the DSA.

Meta removes 10 million Facebook profiles in effort to combat spam

Published

3 hours ago

July 14, 2025

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Meta removes 10 million Facebook profiles in effort to combat spam

Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg looks on before the luncheon on the inauguration day of U.S. President Donald Trump’s second presidential term in Washington on Jan. 20, 2025.

Evelyn Hockstein | Reuters

Meta on Monday said it has removed about 10 million profiles for impersonating large content producers through the first half of 2025 as part of an effort by the company to combat “spammy content.”

The crackdown is part of Meta’s broader effort to make the Facebook feed more relevant and authentic by taking action against and removing accounts that engage in “spammy” behavior, such as content created using artificial intelligence tools.

As part of that initiative, Meta is also rolling out stricter measures to promote original posts from creators, the company said in a blog post.

Facebook also took action against approximately 500,000 accounts that it identified to be engaged in inauthentic behavior and spam. These actions included demoting comments and reducing distribution of content, which are intended to make it harder for these accounts to monetize their posts.

Meta said unoriginal content is when images or videos are reused without crediting the original creator. Meta said it now has technology that will detect duplicate videos and reduce the distribution of that content.

The action against spam and inauthentic content comes as Meta increases its investment in AI, with CEO Mark Zuckerberg on Monday announcing plans to spend “hundreds of billions of dollars” on AI compute infrastructure to bring the company’s first supercluster online next year.

This mandate comes at a time when AI is making it easier to mass-produce content across social media platforms. Other platforms are also taking action to combat the increase of spammy, low-quality content on social media, also known as “AI slop.”

Google’s YouTube announced a change in policy this month that prevents content that is mass-produced or repetitive from being eligible for being awarded revenue.

This announcement sparked confusion on social media, with many users believing this was a reversal on YouTube’s stance on AI content. However, YouTube clarified that the policy change is aimed at curbing unoriginal, spammy and repetitive videos.

“We welcome creators using AI tools to enhance their storytelling, and channels that use AI in their content remain eligible to monetize,” said a spokesperson for YouTube in a blog post to clarify the new policy.

YouTube’s new policy change will take effect on Tuesday.