Ethermine, the largest Ethereum mining services provider by computing power, shut down its servers for miners after the blockchain network completed its historic technical upgrade.
The move followed Ethereum’s highly-anticipated software revamp, dubbed the Merge, which shifted the most used blockchain from a proof of work consensus mechanism to proof of stake earlier Thursday. It is no longer possible to mine Ether on the network, since the powerful graphic cards used to validate transaction data are being replaced with investors that stake Ether. The validators will secure the Ethereum blockchain and validate data on the network.
A few days after the Merge, Ethermine will trigger an automatic payout to its miners for any unpaid balances. The company also launched an Ethereum staking pool in August, where Ether holders will be able to deposit their coins and earn yields.
As many as one million people with over $10 billion worth of computer equipment had mined Ether at one point.
Ether mining had developed into a multi-billion dollar industry over the last several years. The activity involved miners competing against each other to be the first to solve mathematic puzzles and earn a reward in the token. Mining pools such as Ethermine aggregated computing power from a group of miners to increase the probability of winning Ether before distributing the rewards among miners. The pools usually charged a fee for providing their services.
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