If you want to mine Ethereum, that’s easy to relate to. It’s the second-largest cryptocurrency by market cap. But you’re a bit late, because Ethereum hasn’t been mineable since 2022. Since then, it can only be staked.
In this article, we’ll explain how Ethereum moved from Proof of Work consensus mechanism to Proof of Stake, what Ethereum mining and Ethereum staking actually mean, and what equipment you need for each option.
Ethereum mining under Proof of Work
Ethereum appeared in 2014 and resembled Bitcoin. The way new coins were created, too. Back then, Ethereum also relied on mining — a process that secures the network and confirms transactions.
Miners ran powerful computers that solved cryptographic puzzles. The speed of these machines is measured in hash rates (how many attempts they could make each second to find the correct hash). The miner who found it first added the next block.
The reward system is simple: miners receive newly created ETH (starting at 5 ETH per block) and all transaction fees included in that block. As more people join mining, Ethereum automatically increases the difficulty. No matter how many miners join, the network keeps producing blocks at the same speed — about one block every 15 seconds.
The Ethereum Merge
Ethereum kept growing, and with that growth came a massive increase in electricity use. At some point, this became a real issue. Mining had become dominated by large mining farms. It required expensive equipment, and the criticism about environmental impact only increased. Ethereum needed a different approach.
This is where Proof of Stake came in. The idea was first proposed by Sunny King and Scott Nadal in 2012. Unlike Proof of Work, which relies on computational competition, Proof of Stake selects validators based on how much cryptocurrency they are willing to lock up as collateral. The higher the stake, the higher the chance of being selected to propose the next block, meaning, to become a validator. If they follow the rules, they earn rewards; if they cheat, they can lose part of their stake.
Also, Proof of Stake allows anyone with a regular computer and some ETH to participate. It provides the scalability that Ethereum’s long-term ambitions required and unlocked upgrades like sharding.
Vitalik Buterin and Ethereum’s research teams spent six years preparing the transition from Proof of Work to Proof of Stake. It required countless tests, shadow forks, and network upgrades to ensure everything worked as intended. And on September 15, 2022, the switch finally happened. The date of the Ethereum Merge became the birthday of Ethereum 2.0. This marked a new chapter for both Ethereum and the entire blockchain industry.
The Ethereum Foundation wrote in its blog that if the switch to POS is successful, it could reduce Ethereum’s energy use by up to 99.95%. A POS Ethereum theoretically “consumes something on the order of 2.62 megawatts,” the blog says. “This is not on the scale of countries… but that of a small town (around 2,100 American homes). For reference, POW consensus on Ethereum currently consumes the energy equivalent of a medium-sized country.”
Can you still mine Ethereum?
No, you can’t mine Ethereum anymore. Today, the only way to earn Ether is through staking.
How to earn ETH through staking
How does staking work? You lock up your ETH to help secure the network, and in return, you earn rewards, usually around 3-4% APY.
If you want full control, you can solo stake. This requires 32 ETH and running your own validator node. It’s the most direct way to earn rewards, but it also demands technical knowledge and constant uptime.
If you don’t have 32 ETH or the desire to manage hardware, the staking pools are your choice. Come in. Platforms like Lido, Rocket Pool, and Coinbase let you stake any amount by joining a pooled validator setup. While they handle operations, you earn rewards minus a small fee as often 5-15%. Many of these services also issue liquid staking tokens, like stETH, which let you earn staking rewards while still being able to trade your tokens in DeFi.
You can also stake directly through major exchanges such as Kraken or Coinbase. It’s called staking-as-a-service. All that’s required from you is to simply place your assets as if you were putting them into a deposit.
Let’s look at the Dune analytics for the complete breakdown of ETH staked in 2025:
- Liquid Staking: 9.83M ETH (27.5%)
- CEXs: 8.98M ETH (25.1%)
- Staking Pools: 5.69M ETH (15.9%)
- Unidentified: 8.67M ETH (24.2%)
- Liquid Restaking: 2.45M ETH (6.9%)
- Solo Stakers: 0.15M ETH (0.4%)
How much electricity does one mining farm consume?
A small home mining rig with 6 GPUs uses about as much electricity as 5-10 powerful gaming PCs running at full load. A big industrial mining farm can consume as much electricity as an entire apartment building.
What to mine after Ethereum
If you already have equipment and the enthusiasm to mine something, you still have a few options.
After the Ethereum Merge, Ethereum Classic mining began. It still uses the same old Proof-of-Work system and doesn't require changing any hardware. It exists because part of the community refused to rewrite the chain after the 2016 DAO hack and kept running the original blockchain. However, now, it feels like a frozen snapshot of early Ethereum.
Other GPU-mineable options include Ravencoin, Litecoin, Dogecoin, and Monero. They’re still active PoW networks, but their profitability rarely matches the peak days of Ethereum.
However, among the Reddit reviews, no one said that mining in 2025 is profitable. Users complain that electricity costs and equipment expenses eat up all the profits.
What about Bitcoin? It’s technically an option but only if you use specialized ASIC miners (ultra-focused machines that can do only one type of computation extremely fast). Standard GPUs simply can’t compete with Bitcoin’s network power, making it far harder and more expensive to enter.
Note. A single miner almost never finds a block. That’s why people joined the Ethereum mining pool. These pools let miners combine their power, find blocks together, and then share the rewards.
Hardware and software requirements
Whether you’re exploring mining or staking, the setup you need looks very different. Let’s break it down step by step.
What do you need for a GPU mining setup?
Mining Proof-of-Work coins still relies on graphics cards, often called GPUs (Graphics Processing Units). You may be surprised why we need graphics cards for creating crypto. The thing is, they’re the only hardware that can perform millions of simple calculations in parallel.
So, for mining, you need such hardware:
- GPU (Think of NVIDIA RTX 3080/4090 or AMD RX 6800 XT)
- strong power supply (1,000W+)
- compatible motherboard
- decent CPU (Central Processing Unit)
- 16GB of RAM (Random Access Memory)
- SSD (Solid-State Drive)
Ethereum mining software such as GMiner, NiceHash, and HiveOS helps optimize performance and manage multiple GPUs with ease.
What do you need for the staking node setup?
Staking Ethereum requires much less: a modern CPU, 16GB of RAM, and a 1–2TB SSD are usually enough.
To stake, you must run two programs together: a consensus client (Lighthouse, Prysm, Nimbus) that decides which blocks are valid, and an execution client (Geth, Erigon) that processes transactions and smart contracts. Most home computers can handle this. You need a stable internet and to be near 24/7 uptime.
Staking pools and tools
Here, you don't need any hardware. Services like Lido and Rocket Pool let you stake through a simple web interface. You receive your rewards in wallets like MetaMask, Coinbase Wallet, OKX Wallet.
Risks and security tips
It may seem like there are no risks if you create coins manually instead of buying some scam on an unknown exchange. But there are still risks both from platforms and from your own mistakes.
Mining scams
As with buying any tech, your main red flags here are unverified sellers and unrealistically low prices. As reported by Tom’s Hardware, a buyer purchased a brand-new Nvidia RTX 5090 graphics card for around $2,000. The card looked completely real from the outside, but when the buyer opened it, they discovered that the actual GPU chip and the memory modules had been physically removed from the board. Essentially, it was an empty shell.
Common staking risks
When you stake through a centralized service, you give up control of your assets. That trust backfired for users of Celsius. According to Decrypt, Celsius couldn’t give users their ETH back because much of it was locked in stETH (a token of the staked ETH) which dropped below its 1:1 value with ETH, causing a liquidity crisis.
Both platforms collapsed and froze withdrawals, leaving their clients unable to access their staked ETH.
Solo validators face a different challenge: if your node goes offline or behaves incorrectly, you can be slashed and lose part of your ETH. This happened when a bug caused Staked, the staking infrastructure firm, to have 75 validators slashed, resulting in a total penalty of 18 ETH, The Block reports.
Liquid staking tokens (LSTs) come with smart-contract risk; a bug in the code can put user funds in danger. As CoinDesk noted, this was demonstrated by the Meta Pool exploit, where a smart-contract vulnerability allowed an attacker to mint mpETH and put around $27 million of user funds at risk.
How to recognise danger at first glance
Here are the red flags staking and mining platforms may show: rushed decisions and pressure tactics, requests for private keys, unrealistic returns, hidden or unclear fees, anonymous or unverifiable team, and poor communication. In short, trust your gut. If you feel pressured or something seems “too good to be true,” it probably is.
Security best practices
Here is a small crypto mining guide:
- Download trusted software as GMiner, HiveOS, or NiceHash from official websites.
- Buy hardware only from verified sellers and inspect the device.
- Protect your wallets. Enable 2FA, and never share your seed phrase.
- Mining rigs run hot and consume a lot of power. For safety, make sure to use proper cooling and a high-quality PSU.
- Stick to well-known mining pools with transparent payouts instead of unknown platforms.
Key takeaway
If you still decide to mine, you can do it with Ethereum Classic, Litecoin, Dogecoin, Monero, and a couple of other coins. But remember that mining requires expensive equipment, constant monitoring, and doesn’t guarantee stable profits.
Anastasiia G
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