The chairman of the US Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC), Heath Tarbert, stated that tokens that use proof of stake consensus methods could be treated as securities by the US regulators. The chairman had previously confirmed that with the current consensus mechanism of Ethereum, ETH is a commodity and not a security.
Ethereum 2.0 would make ETH a security
Ethereum plans to change its consensus mechanism from Proof of Work (PoW) to Proof of Stake (PoS). According to the CFTC chairman, this could make ETH a security. Tarbert said that mining is a much more decentralized way to get cryptocurrencies.
Proof of Stake requires nodes to stake coins for block creation, and nodes with the highest number of coins win the right to create the next block and earn rewards.
Istanbul Hard Fork scheduled for next month
Earlier, Péter Szilágyi, a core Ethereum developer, confirmed that the next hard fork of the network is scheduled for December 4. Ethereum blockchain is the second largest network in the industry at the moment. The Ethereum founders have promised to solve various issues on the network with the next upgrade, including scalability.
The founders of the blockchain network faced a lot of criticism earlier when they openly admitted that they knew the network was never designed for scalability.
