Almost 20% of all internet traffic on the planet runs through Cloudflare’s infrastructure, and they are now going to be running an Ethereum Consensus Layer node by staking ETH.
For those who are unaware of Cloudflare, it “is a global network designed to make everything you connect to the Internet secure, private, fast, and reliable.” Along with Amazon’s AWS, it is the backbone of web2 infrastructure.
If Cloudflare goes down, it takes down most of the web2 ecosystem, including Discord, Shopify, Coinbase, Canva, SoundCloud, Robin Hood, Medium, Pinterest, and Dropbox, to name a few.
It has been web3 friendly since 2018, when it integrated an InterPlanetary File System gateway into its infrastructure.
Then, in 2019 it added an Ethereum Gateway through RPC nodes to allow users to interact with the Ethereum blockchain. This became a part of their Distributed Web Gateway and showcased their adoption of web3 tools for clients.
Cloudflare is staking Ethereum
Cloudflare has now announced that it will be staking Ethereum to participate in the Ethereum Consensus Layer as it moves to proof of stake.
ETH will have to be staked to secure the network when Ethereum moves away from proof of work in the coming weeks, months, or years (depending on who you believe).
Mining with GPUs will become a thing of the past, and validators will instead use their ETH holdings to participate in confirming transactions and verifying data on the blockchain.
Cloudflare states the move comes as it is “finding new ways to help solve the scale and environmental challenges that face blockchain technologies today.” While it acknowledges that PoW is highly secure, it goes on to argue that,
“While that process is incredibly secure because of the vast amount of hashing that occurs, Proof of Work networks are wasteful. This waste is driven by the fact that Proof of Work consensus mechanisms are electricity-intensive.”
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