Largest Ether Mining Pool Ethermine Opens New ETH Staking Service

The new service offers Ethermine members the opportunity to collectively stake their ETH and earn 4.43% interest per year by more of their ETH deposits. As low as 0.1 ETH ($159) required to enter.

Ahead of the impending Ethereum (ETH) merger on September 15, Ethermine, the world's largest Ethereum mining pool, unveiled a new staking pool for users. Notably however, it is not available for US minors

The new service offers Ethermine members a chance to collectively stake their ETH and earn interest on top of their deposits. As low as 0.1 ETH ($159) required to enter. However, the smaller the stake, the higher the fee. The platform currently offers subscribers an annual ETH interest rate of 4.43%.

As of this writing, 393 Ethers worth approximately $626,000 at current prices have been invested in the new Ethermine pool.

Staking pools such as these are important because they offer competitive interest rates and lower barriers to entry than solo staking as node operators, which requires at least 32 ETH ($51,000) to operate a node. In comparison, at the interest rate of Ethermine, betting on Ethpool as a node operator pays an annual interest rate of 4.6%.

The move to staking offering is something of a pivot for Ethermine which currently operates as a multi-currency mining pool, allowing users to mine ETH, Zcash, Ethereum Classic (ETC), Beam (BEAM), Ravencoin (RVN) and Ergo (ERGO).

After the merger, ETH mining will be phased out as the network transitions from a proof-of-work (PoW) mining model to a proof-of-stake (PoS) staking model.< /p>

At the time of writing, there are 222,657 active miners on Ethermine which represents a combined hash rate of 261.1 terra hashes per second (TH/s). After September 15, the pool will only continue to support PoW mining of Ethereum Classic (ETC), Ravencoin (RVN), Ergo (ERGO), and Beam (BEAM).

Min...