The Ethereum Merge has finally gone live as scheduled by Ethereum developers. The Ethereum network has transitioned from proof-of-work (PoW) to proof-of-stake (PoS). The Merge happened on September 15 at 06:42:42 UTC at block 15,537,393.
Despite much buzz surrounding this event, ETH is yet to react with a massive pump. According to CoinGecko, Ether has gained by only 1.3% during the past 24 hours. ETH is down by 15% in 30 days.
Ethereum Merge finally goes live
The merging of the Ethereum mainnet execution layer and the Beacon Chain consensus layer at a Terminal Total Difficulty of 58,750,000,000,000,000,000,000 has been completed. This means that Ethereum will no longer rely on a PoW consensus mechanism.
At the time of writing, ETH was trading at $1,610, according to CoinGecko, showing that the news of the completion of the Merge is yet to cause a buying spree. Few traders seem to be buying the rumor of the Merge, with notable selling volumes witnessed in the days leading up to the Merge.
The CoinShares weekly report revealed that Ether-based investment products had the largest volume of outflows during the September 5-11 week. This marked the fifth consecutive week of outflows for the token.
In the report, CoinShares noted that the outflows were caused by uncertainty from investors that the Merge would not go as planned. However, now that the event has been completed successfully, the upcoming trading hours are important to watch as they will turn bullish in the near term if the bears remain in control.
Several onlookers had questioned whether Ethereum developers would pull off the Merge following several delays in the past. Moreover, the shift of this scale on a network as massive as Ethereum has never been done before. Therefore, the finalization of the Merge is quite bullish for Ethereum.
Ethereum developers will monitor the network in the coming hours to ensure that the PoS blockchain is stable and functioning properly. Ethereum developer, Marius van der Wijden, had earlier revealed that some bugs could be triggered after a few days. Therefore, the resistance to buying could be attributed to traders waiting to see how Ethereum will operate as PoS.
Merge is just a first step
The transition of Ethereum from PoW to PoS is expected to lower the network’s energy demand by 99%. Over the past year, Bitcoin mining sites have been under scrutiny for their high electricity consumption. Therefore, Ethereum’s transition to PoS is seen as an advantage of the network over Bitcoin.
However, the Merge will not automatically solve issues faced by Ethereum network users, such as high transaction fees and slow speeds.
After the Merge, the other processes are Surge, Verge, Purge, and Splurge. These are the final stages within the Ethereum roadmap that will see the network achieve the desired scalability levels.
The Surge will boost the network’s scalability through sharding, while the Verge will use Verkle trees to achieve statelessness. The Purge will eliminate technical and historical data, while the Splurge will involve minor upgrades.
Investors will also not be able to withdraw their staked Ether tokens immediately. Those that staked Ether on Beacon Chain will wait for six to twelve months until the Shanghai upgrade is done.
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