Cloudflare, an Internet services and DDoS attack protection company, has announced a new strategy for its Web3 experiments. The company announced that it will run Ethereum validator nodes as part of its commitment to help scale the Internet using consensus proof-of-stake (PoS) technologies. This will ostensibly allow the company to access the energy efficiency and consistency of the technology.
Cloudflare is entering the cryptocurrency market via Ethereum
Cloudflare, one of the leading content delivery and DDoS attack protection companies, announced a new Web3 push experiment that uses the forthcoming Ethereum share proof network. The company said it will launch Ethereum validator nodes as part of the experiment to evaluate the viability of the scaling technology in the future.
Cloudflare said that blockchain technology could become part of the history of the internet in the long term and that the experience could help decentralize such networks. On this point, the company stated:
For the Ethereum ecosystem, the launch of validator nodes on our network allows us to offer even greater geographic decentralization in regions such as EMEA, LATAM and APJC, as well as add decentralization to network infrastructure.
Cloudflare clarified that these actions will take place in the coming months before The Merge, the consensus mechanism change that the Ethereum network intends to implement later this year.
Proof of Preference
Cloudflare has clearly stated that it supports proof-of-share networks because of the low energy consumption compared to similar proof-of-work networks, stating that “the energy required to run a proof-of-share validator node is many times less than that required to run a proof-of-work miner.” About proof-of-work-based networks such as Bitcoin, Cloudflare stated:
Proof-of-work networks are wasteful. This waste is due to the fact that proof-of-work consensus mechanisms require a lot of power.
The company also stated that as part of its commitment to sustainability, “Cloudflare has not and will not launch its own proof-of-work infrastructure on our network.” While Cloudflare will start experimenting with Ethereum first, it also mentioned another consensus mechanism, “time proof,” in its press release.
This consensus mechanism is used in Filecoin, a decentralized storage network that uses incentives to save participants’ files. This may hint at the possibility of including this network in the set of experiments that the Internet company will conduct in the future.
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