The Merge is the most significant upgrade in the history of Ethereum. Extensive testing and bug bounties were undertaken to ensure a safe transition to proof-of-stake.
It’s been almost two years in the making but the time has finally come for Ethereum’s Merge to take place.
In less than six hours, Eth will make its move from a PoW to PoS consensus mechanism, a moment that’s being described by Forbes “as the biggest thing in the crypto since Bitcoin”.
For two years, Eth developers have been working to merge the Beacon Chain and Mainnet.
A new era will be ushered in when the Beacon Chain will finally be the consensus engine for transactions, balances, and network data.
No doubt such a moment will be surrounded by excitement for anyone in the Eth community but the occasion will be especially significant for developers.
DevOp for Ethereum Parithosh Jayanthi spoke with us and expressed how elated he was for it all to be finally happening.
“I’m feeling ecstatic that we’re so close to deploying such a monumental update!” he said.
Moreover, he went onto to detail what the team at Eth will be doing in these final hours.
“The last few dates are spent looking for anything we might have missed and in general working on documentation to make it easier to run nodes.
“We’re also working on various ways to monitor the network in order to get a better idea of what’s happening.”
Several testnets including Sepolia and Goerli faucets have provided a basis for developers to ensure a successful merger.
Wen Merge has actively been involved in running such testnets as well as helping with the Ethereum Cat Herders to design and develop Learn 2 Learn.
They told NewsCop about their involvement and excitement with the move to PoS.
“We are so excited about the Merge. It’s a historical moment in history of Ethereum and Web3.0,” they said.
“We helped [the] Ethereum Community by having the countdown for last 6 months and we have had more than 1 million visits.
“It’s been an absolutely fantastic experience being involved in the community and helping it grow. After The Merge we will keep the website going and putting [out] news and updates about Ethereum Network.”
Speaking with us was Ethereum researcher Justin Drake who mentioned some benefits to the PoS system that may be overshadowed by the mass power reduction.
“ETH issuance will go down by -10x, and as a consequence the ETH supply should decrease. This is because fee burn will likely be greater than issuance,” he said.
We spoke to ultra sound money on Twitter who showed us that the expected Eth supply projected for post merge would sit at about 0.6m ETH a year or the equivalent to $1 billion.
They also said that “everything is on track” and that they’re “expecting the merge to be successful”.
When asked if there was anything that could interrupt a successful Merge, Drake said that “there will likely be some client bugs” but talked about “ client bug diversity” and how that will help to limit interruptions.
Reducing the energy consumption by 99.95 per cent is the most notable main goal of the Merge but it will also give developers the opportunity to carry out upgrades not possible under proof-of-work.
While the Merge will usher in a new sustainable era that’s yet to be seen in crypto, the question remains of what comes next for Ethereum?
The next big update following the Merge will be the Shanghai upgrade, which is essential in helping to bring in the release of Ethereum 2.0.
This upgrade will tackle such issues as Beacon chain withdraw delay, giving users the opportunity to withdraw any deposited Eth. It will also be useful in lowering the price of gas fees as well as to separate code and data from the Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM).
Justin Drake told NewsCop that there is “no expected date” but according to several articles online, aficionados are predicting that it might happen sometime in early 2023.
