Cloudflare announced that it will run Ethereum validator nodes as part of its commitment to assist in the scaling of the internet through the use of proof-of-stake (PoS) consensus technologies.
Cloudflare, leading content delivery and DDoS mitigation company, has announced a new Web3 push that will take advantage of Ethereum’s upcoming proof-of-stake network. The company announced that as part of its experiment, it will run Ethereum validator nodes to assess the viability of the scaling technology in the future.
Cloudflare stated that blockchain technologies could be a part of the internet’s long-term story and that these experiences could aid in the decentralization of such networks. The company stated in this regard:
“For the Ethereum ecosystem, running validator nodes on our network allows us to offer even more geographic decentralization in places like EMEA, LATAM, and APJC while also adding infrastructure decentralization to the network.”
Cloudflare stated that these actions will take place in the coming months before The Merge, the change in consensus mechanism that the Ethereum network plans to implement later this year.
Cloudflare has stated that it supports proof-of-stake networks because they use less energy than proof-of-work networks, stating that “the energy required to operate a proof-of-stake validator node is magnitudes less than a proof-of-work miner.” Cloudflare stated the following about proof-of-work networks, such as Bitcoin:
“Proof of work networks are wasteful. This waste is driven by the fact that proof of work consensus mechanisms is electricity-intensive.”
As part of its commitment to sustainability, Cloudflare also stated, “Cloudflare has not and will not run our proof of work infrastructure on our network.” While Cloudflare will begin experimenting with Ethereum first, it also mentioned another consensus mechanism in its press release, “proof of spacetime.”
This consensus mechanism is used by Filecoin, a decentralized storage network that uses incentives to keep participants’ files safe. This could indicate that this network will be included in the set of experiments that the internet company will be conducting in the future.