Quantifying Ethereum Energy Consumption via Network Mapping
Ethereum P2P crawl of 6,934 peers estimates network power draw at 415 kW, about 46% of the Cambridge CCAF figure, relevant to MiCAR energy reporting.
After Ethereum's proof-of-stake transition cut electricity use by roughly 99.95%, the authors crawl consensus and execution layers, assign per-peer wattages from advertised attributes (client, ARM/x86, hosting, validator role), and estimate unknown peers with a Random Forest. On 6,934 peers from Nebula crawls on 19 and 22 June 2026, reachable nodes draw 415 kW (3.63 GWh annualized), about 46% of the CCAF estimate of 0.90 MW. Attribute-based wattages lower the total by 3.9% versus a uniform assumption; AWS accounts for 15.6% of watts from 12.2% of peers, and validator-flagged nodes for 31.4% of watts from 25.7% of peers. The forest's mean absolute error on held-out peers is 4.3 W, with residual differences around 19% after excluding an idle 33 W graphics card.
- Ethereum PoS transition cut network electricity use by about 99.95%
- 6,934 crawled peers draw an estimated 415 kW, about 46% of the CCAF estimate
- Node-advertised attributes lower the total 3.9% versus uniform per-node wattage
- Relevant to MiCAR operational energy reporting requirements
Full article285 words · extracted from arxiv.org · click to collapse
Ethereum's electricity use fell by about 99.95% after the move from proof of work to proof of stake. Service providers still need to report operational energy use, e.g. under the EU Markets in Crypto-Assets Regulation (MiCAR). Existing estimates either apply one typical wattage to every node or start from aggregated monitoring counts. Both ignore attributes that nodes already advertise on the peer-to-peer network: client software, ARM or x86 hardware, hosting location, and validator role. We crawl the consensus and execution layers, assign each peer a wattage from those attributes using published measurements, and estimate the remaining incomplete peers with a Random Forest. On 6,934 peers from two Nebula crawls (19 and 22 June 2026), reachable nodes sum to 415 kW, or 3.63 GWh if that draw were held for a year. The same Lighthouse+Nethermind x86 wattage on every peer yields 431 kW. Observed attributes lower the total by 3.9%, mainly because nodes at Hetzner and other non-AWS clouds draw less than that home-desktop figure. AWS accounts for 15.6% of watts from 12.2% of peers, and validator-flagged nodes for 31.4% of watts from 25.7% of peers. The 415 kW snapshot is about 46% of the Cambridge Centre for Alternative Finance (CCAF) estimate of about 0.90 MW. Both use about 60 W per node, so the gap is mostly how many nodes each estimate includes. Rules cover 3,110 peers and the forest the other 3,824. On held-out labeled peers with client, architecture, and OS hidden, the forest's mean absolute error against the rule wattage is 4.3 W. Twenty-four-hour measurements on a gaming desktop differ from the predictions. After subtracting a 33 W idle graphics card that Ethereum clients do not need, both differences fall to about 19%.
Text extracted automatically; images, tables and formatting may be missing. Original: https://arxiv.org/abs/2610.03440