William Shatner, a well-known Canadian actor who played Admiral James T. Kirk in the illustrious Star Trek series, has expressed support for Ethereum and congratulated Vitalik Buterin, the founder of the blockchain, on the occasion. In his speech,  Shatner focused in particular on the advantages for the environment of moving away from the proof-of-work consensus and toward proof of stake.

As mentioned by numerous studies and, in particular, by analysts of the World Economic Forum, the update should result in a 99.5% reduction in the energy used for Ethereum mining. Furthermore, ETH’s standing should theoretically increase in the eyes of institutional investors who have limitations on transactions with PoW cryptocurrencies as a result of PoW’s rejection.

Ethereum fresh drawbacks

Nevertheless, despite the transition’s generally favorable effects, Vitalik’s initiative also developed new issues. For instance, in the days following September 15, it was revealed that only two addresses control more than 40% of the PoS nodes on the Ethereum network, raising concerns about the decentralization of the blockchain at the time. 

Given the present climate in the crypto industry, the other issue originated where you may have expected it to. It concerns SEC Chairman Gary Gensler’s remark that ETH, which is now running on PoS, can be considered a security.

The official explained the PoS consensus by saying that earning money by staking cryptocurrencies meets the Howey test for determining whether an instrument is a security without mentioning Ethereum in vain.

This also comes at a time when Binance, Lido, and other exchanges have declared they do not support the airdrop. The ETHW airdrop will not be available to ETH stakers on a number of platforms, including Binance and Lido. When the Ethereum fork happens, most stakers want to receive some new tokens in the form of ETHW airdropped to their wallets.

The biggest Ethereum staking service and the biggest exchange in the world have announced that users of their services would not be receiving any ETHW airdrops. Most ETH stakers are based in Lido and Binance. Consequently, several stakeholder groups are impacted by their decisions.