Proof-of-Stake is not coming to ETH anytime soon – and the reason why, is apparently not due to technical problems.

At Bitmine we don’t think it will be that easy to undermine Ethereum POW mining.
We saw a few months ago ETC (Ethereum Classic) take off in the markets, and it was probably caused by the dissent of miners who don’t agree with the move to POW, or to EIP 1559.
In the world of cryptocurrencies competition is fundamental for them to be successful in the future, and to remain decentralized.
We therefore believe that ETH’s eventual move to POS (Proof of Stake) will happen much further down the road than we imagine.

This means only one thing, that we will be able to mine ETH for a long time to come.

“Vitalik Buterin, co-founder of Ethereum and one of the industry’s prominent thought-leaders, recently spoke at the Hong Kong’s StartmeupHK Festival 2021 tech conference. Among many topics, Buterin shared his thoughts on Ethereum’s hotly-anticipated shift from proof-of-work (PoW) to proof-of-stake (PoS).

To the disappointment of many however, the shipping of shard chains is not expected until sometime in late 2022, according to Ethereum’s latest roadmap. While a transition from PoW to PoS is expected to take place sometime in 2021/2022, the inclusion of shard chains is seen by many as the official completion of the Ethereum 2.0 upgrade. While many have believed the delay was due to the technically-burdensome transition, the actual issue is apparently something different.

Ethereum 2.0 Delay: People Problems, Not Technical Problems
At the conference, Buterin explained:

“One of the biggest problems I’ve found with our project is not the technical problems, it’s problems related with people”.

This might come as a surprise, as many people had thought the delays to PoS were due to computational, or programming-based issues, as changing the consensus algorithm of the largest blockchain ecosystem certainly sounds tough. But this is apparently not the case.

He spoke about disagreements and issues with the Etheruem team, stating that “we have a lot of internal team conflicts in these five years. If you are building a team, it is important to know who you are working with”. This is not the most shocking revelation when you consider how many Ethereum co-founders have left in the past to build rival blockchains. Just think of individuals such as Gavin Wood, co-founder of Polkadot and Kusama, and Charles Hoskinson, founder of Cardano. In fact, of Ethereum’s original co-founders, Buterin is the only one still at the company.

Buterin’s reveal that it is the people holding back Etheruem’s upgrades, rather than the technology, is bittersweet. On one hand, it shows that the upgrades are computationally and practically possible, meaning that we will eventually see them rolled out in the future. But on the other hand, it gives us a damning picture of how the Etheruem team functions and operates.

Buterin’s citing of team conflicts also seems contradictory to what we have previously known about Ethereum’s struggles. This largely due to comments made by others working on the blockchain such as Tim Beiko. In the past, he was spoken about Ethereum’s struggles as primarily technological ones.

For instance, earlier in the year, Beiko noted that sharding (the ability to run nodes on lower spec computers) was one of the biggest factors holding back the blockchain. However, Buterin’s most recent words suggest otherwise.”

Source.