During the past few weeks, cryptocurrency investors have been anxiously awaiting undoubtedly the most anticipated event of the decade. Combined Proof-of-Work (PoW) and Beacon Chain, Ethereum’s mainnet protocol is now proof-of-stake (PoS).
And we finalized!
Happy merge all. This is a big moment for the Ethereum ecosystem. Everyone who helped make the merge happen should feel very proud today.
— vitalik.eth (@VitalikButerin) September 15, 2022
Known as “the Merge,” the Paris upgrade just went through with a Total Terminal Difficulty of 58750000000000000000000.
With this changeover, Ethereum’s consensus algorithm changed from one governed by proof-of-work to one governed by proof-of-stake. The protocol is also changing token emission dynamics and tokenomics, which are expected to have significant long-term consequences on the whole ecosystem.
THE MERGE pic.twitter.com/7tdfNZiuuv
— beeple (@beeple) September 15, 2022
In essence, the Merge indicates the union of the execution layer with the consensus layer (previously the Beacon Chain) (formerly the PoW chain).
ETH owners may experience the biggest economic repercussions from the formal halt of mining. By reducing the emission of new ETH to the market by 90%, the amount of money required to sustain current prices would be dramatically reduced.
THE #ETHEREUM MERGE WAS A SUCCESS!
— Altcoin Daily (@AltcoinDailyio) September 15, 2022
In spite of the Merge now being complete, Ethereum still has a long way to go to meet its team’s vision.
So What’s Next?
Proof-of-Stake promises to improve Ethereum’s scalability and transactional throughput in addition to reducing ETH emissions. However, this won’t happen overnight.
The network will actually go through four stages now that the Merge has been finalized. These stages will include The Rise, A Verge, A Purge, and The Expensive.
As separate objectives, they seek to make the network more scalable, secure, decentralized, and user-friendly, but when combined, they aim to improve its capabilities. Now that the Merge has ended, it’s important to follow the same precautions as before.
***
