What you need to know about the Ethereum Merge
In the upcoming days, we will experience a long awaited event by many. The merge of the Ethereum proof-of-work layer with the proof-of-stake beacon chain represents a culmination of innumerable development hours, test-nets, and unit testing. At the time of this writing, Ethereum is $1,741.73, with a market cap of $213,101,761,340, it is home for over 3000+ dapps, and is considered to be the cornerstone of DeFi.
Once complete the network will no longer operate be using proof-of-work to mine transactions. This means less carbon emissions, which will help lower the eco-footprint of Ethereum on the world we live in.
You may be wondering, does this mean fees will be as low as other L2 solutions? The answer is complicated, initially the merge will not have an impact on transaction fees, however optimizations will come through the form of other network upgrade events, there are a total of 5 main ones:
- The merge (changing consensus)
- The surge (improving scaling)
- The verge (optimizing data storage)
- The purge (further optimize data storage)
- The splurge (miscellaneous updates)
By the end of this upgrade roadmap, Ethereum will operate at a claimed “100,000 transactions per second” — Vitalik Buterin, while being “99% more efficient than proof-of-work” (according to estimates).
