Google News
On September 15 at 8:42 in the morning in the block 15537393, the long-awaited Merge finally happened and the Ethereum main network and consensus layer of Beacon Chain at Total Difficulty of 587500000000000000000000 was made, which means the network will no longer rely on Proof-off-work mechanism.
The post-Merge Ethereum price has been relatively stable, currently trading at around $1,590, according to data from Coingecko. The Ethereum Foundation said Merge will make the Ethereum network about 99.95% more energy efficient and will lay the foundation for future scaling solutions, including sharding.
Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin celebrated the Merger with a tweet moments after the historic transition took place. StarkWare president and co-founder Eli Ben-Sasson said that "the immediate importance of Merge is the dramatic effect on energy consumption." Ben-Sasson said it also marks "the first step in a process that will lead to extremely broad adoption of Ethereum," stating: "It sets off a chain reaction of change.
The end result will be a very broad use of Ethereum's computing power and the general population using blockchain-based applications in many different areas of life."
Merge is the result of years of work by the Ethereum Foundation
Companies issuing Ethereum-based exchange-traded products (ETPs) have been busy making their own adaptations for Merge.
Bradley Duke, CEO of European crypto ETP issuer ETC Group, explained that the company has prepared a "forked version" of its ETH-based ETP in case there is significant support for the PoW fork after the Merge. After the merger is complete, "Surge", "Verge", "Purge" and "Splurge" are the last phases left on the Ethereum technical map.
Surge will increase scalability for rollups through sharding, Verge will achieve statelessness through Verkle trees, Purge will eliminate historical data and technical debt, and Splurge will include a number of small miscellaneous upgrades.
One of the biggest transitions in blockchain history did not go unopposed. ETHW Core, a group representing proof-of-work miners, has announced that they will implement a hard fork within 24 hours of the Merge.