The miners are hoping to repurpose large, expensive data centres, but the network improvement will eliminate the need for them.
Ahead of the network’s transition to a different sort of consensus mechanism — an upgrade known as the Merge — some of the largest Ethereum miners in the world are aiming to shift their computing power to cloud computing and artificial intelligence (AI).
The Merge, which is scheduled to occur between September 13 and 16, will replace proof-of-work (PoW) with proof-of-stake (PoS), eliminating the need for powerful computers and data centres and reducing the network’s energy consumption by at least 99.95%.
Hive Blockchain (HIVE), a Canadian cryptocurrency miner that had expressed doubts about the Merge just a month prior, revealed on Tuesday that it was testing other coins that can be mined using its fleet of graphics processing units (GPUs), as well as cloud computing and artificial intelligence (AI) programmes.
View more: The Effects of the Merge on Ethereum Miners
In a “Tier 3” data centre, where some of the Nvidia A40 GPU cards are being used for cloud computing, the miner already has a test pilot project running. The company stated in a press release that the A40 cards “can be used for cloud computing and AI applications, as well as rendering for engineering applications, in addition to scientific modelling of fluid dynamics.”
In the meantime, Hut 8 (HUT), a different Canadian miner that has been expanding into high-performance computing since the beginning of the year, also announced on Tuesday that its most recent installation of GPUs will be “designed to pivot on demand to provide Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning, or VFX rendering services to customers.”
What the Ethereum miners will do following the Merge has been the subject of extensive speculation. One notion is that after a heist in which $60 million was taken from one of the first decentralised autonomous organisations (DAOs) on the Ethereum network, miners may switch their mining rigs to Ethereum Classic, the splinter network that arose after the 2016 hard fork.
In reality, Ethereum Classic has become a possible winner in the lead-up to Ethereum’s Merge event later this month, with network metrics leaping to all-time highs and ETC tokens increasing in value in a largely stable crypto market. As of Tuesday morning, the Ethereum Classic hashrate had increased to over 48.64 terahashes per second (TH/s), up more than 133% since July, while the price of ETC tokens had increased by almost 28% over the previous day.
In line with most of its mining peers on Tuesday, Hive’s stock price dropped more than 5% while Hut 8’s stock dropped by about 3%.