Merge Has Happened. Ethereum Makes History

Finally, the Ethereum Merge is over, and the transition to proof-of-stake consensus has been completely implemented.

On September 15, at 06:42:42 UTC, at block 15537393, the long-awaited Merge occurred, bringing together Ethereum’s main net execution layer and the Beacon Chain’s consensus layer. In other words, the network will stop using the PoW consensus method.

TradingView shows that in hourly measurements, the price of Ethereum (ETH) has risen somewhat after the Merge. The current market price is about $1,635.

The Ethereum Foundation estimates that the Merge will boost the Ethereum network’s efficiency in terms of the amount of energy it uses by around 99.5%. This paves the path for potential future scalability methods like sharding.

Vitalik Buterin, one of Ethereum’s co-founders, expressed his joy:

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.

StarkWare’s president and co-founder, Eli Ben-Sasson, said that the Merge’s massive effect on energy consumption had its most immediate importance.

In addition, according to Ben-Sasson, this event is the first step in a chain reaction that would ultimately result in the very widespread adoption of Ethereum.

There will be a chain reaction of subsequent changes as a result. The result will be extensive use of Ethereum’s processing capabilities and widespread acceptance of blockchain-based apps across a wide variety of human activities.

What’s Next After the Merge?

Since its inception, the Ethereum Foundation has worked tirelessly to provide the groundwork for the Merge.

After the successful conclusion of the Merge stage, the Ethereum development team will go on to the subsequent “Surge,” “Verge,” “Purge,” and “Splurge” phases.

A major change in blockchain history was confronted with opposition, but it finally prevailed. Just after the Merge, the group ETHW Core, which speaks for proof-of-work miners, said that it plans to execute a hard fork within the next twenty-four hours.