Ethereum’s Hashrate Surpasses Lifetime High as The Merge Gets Closer

Following the all-time high (ATH) recorded in May, Ethereum’s hashrate has been breaking records again, as it reached 132 petahash per second (PH/s) on Saturday, June 4. Presently, Ethereum’s hashrate is coasting along at 129 PH/s and the network’s top mining pool Ethermine commands 0.24% of the network’s hashrate.

On June 2, Bitcoin.com News reported on the top five mining pools retaining over 71% of Bitcoin’s hashrate during the month of May. BTC’s hashrate at the time had a rough average of around 200 exahash per second (EH/s) and 16 known mining pools mined the leading crypto asset.

Last May, around 1.03% of Bitcoin’s hashrate stemmed from stealth miners and the processing power tapped an ATH on May 2, 2022, at block height 734,577. Ethereum’s hashrate also reached an ATH in May during the Terra LUNA and UST fallout, tapping 127 PH/s at block height 14,770,231.

Roughly two weeks later, Ethereum’s hashrate reached 127 PH/s again at block height 14,874,537 on May 30. While Bitcoin has 16 known mining pools capturing a majority of the network’s hashrate — as the top five command more than 70% — Ethereum has 78 pools dedicated to the chain.

Ethereum’s top mining pool Ethermine commands 296.69 terahash per second (TH/s) and the second-largest pool, F2pool, captures 151.46 TH/s. Ethermine and F2pool are followed by Poolin, Hiveon, and 2miners. Out of the top five ether mining pool metrics, the combined pools produce 0.745% of Ethereum’s global hashrate.

Saturday’s data shows that Ethereum’s hashrate reached 132 PH/s, as the hashpower metric once again tapped another ATH in 2022. The ATH took place at block height 14,902,285 and it was 3.93% higher than the ETH hashrate metrics recorded on May 13 and May 30 (127 PH/s).

The record highs this year come as The Merge approaches and the network will be fully transitioned into a proof-of-stake (PoS) blockchain protocol. Once the transition is complete, the 78 mining pools dedicating hashpower to the Ethereum chain will need to mine another network.

There are a number of crypto networks ETH miners could choose from, including ethereum classic (ETC), ubiq (UBQ), musicoin (MUSIC), callisto (CLO), and quarkchain (QKC). At the time of writing, Ethereum’s consensus algorithm Ethash is the most profitable and it is followed by the consensus algorithm Kadena in terms of profitability.

Further, three other consensus algorithms are more profitable than SHA256 (BTC’s algorithm), which include Scrypt, X11, and Cuckatoo32. Following The Merge, however, the consensus algorithm Ethash will likely drop from being the most profitable algorithm to mine with ethereum (ETH) mining capabilities removed.

What do you think about Ethereum’s hashrate reaching an all-time high on Saturday? Let us know what you think about this subject in the comments section below.