RAISED STAKE

Miners hoard processing power because of the ‘proof of work’ model, which – because only the first to solve a problem gets the reward – incentivises them to compete with other miners for each transaction. It’s an incredibly inefficient process, by design, but there are other options, most notably ‘proof of stake’, which randomly offers validation opportunities to a limited number of validators at once, reducing some of the need for competition and thus the amount of processing power being expended on each transaction. Ethereum, one of the biggest blockchains (with, according to Digiconomist’s energy consumption index, an annual power consumption equivalent to the entire nation of Chile), was founded on proof of work, but is in the process of transitioning to proof of stake.