New data is out regarding the amount of energy saved by Ethereum's move from a Proof of Work to Proof of Stake consensus mechanism known as the "Merge," which occurred on Sept. 15. Cointelepgraph reports that post-Merge, Ethereum's network power consumption is down by over 99 percent, and the network's carbon footprint now stands at 0.1 million tonnes of CO2 (MtCO2) per year, meaning that the electrical consumption for single Ethereum transactions "is equivalent to the energy used when watching two hours of YouTube."

Earlier this week, Protocol Labs and Filecoin Foundation, together with other founding members, announced the launching of the Decentralized Storage Alliance (the Alliance), a first-of-its-kind, member-led industry organization to drive awareness and adoption of decentralized technologies such as Filecoin, IPFS and libp2p, and help Web2 participants make the transition to Web3 through education, advocacy and best practices. According to a press release, decentralized storage networks promise to enable more efficient, robust and secure storage at lower costs than traditional data storage. "With top-tier leaders across Web2 and Web3 coming together to explore the unrealized potential of decentralized technology, this Alliance has the power to transform the foundation of the internet," said Stefaan Vervaet, Head of Network Growth, Protocol Labs. "Decentralized storage can provide assurances of data integrity, avoid data lock-in, meet data sovereignty requirements, and offers many significant advantages over traditional Web2 data solutions."

Last week, a major U.S. technology company announced its Blockchain Node Engine, a fully managed node-hosting service that can minimize the need for node operations, allowing developers to spend more time building product and less time managing their nodes, which may help strengthen blockchain infrastructures. According to an announcement by the company, the new Blockchain Node Engine boasts low-latency networking that can scale seamlessly as developers need it, proprietary digital asset security, and simplified node deployment with real-time data and insights from the company's cloud service. Ethereum will be the first blockchain supported by the Blockchain Node Engine.

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