The much-awaited event of 2022 in the crypto world has finally taken place. Yes, we’re talking about the historical moment of Ethereum’s merge of Proof of Work to Proof of Stake.  Undoubtedly, this merge has opened a new era for the second biggest blockchain in the crypto world, strengthening its grounds.

The main idea behind this Ethereum merge was to advance Ethereum by changing how Ethereum verifies its transactions. In this Merge, the Beacon Chain is Ethereum’s next proof-of-stake consensus layer, integrating with Ethereum’s existing execution layer. As part of the benefits of this merge, staking ETH instead of mining for network security would reduce energy consumption to 99.95% compared to the proof-of-work system. As a result, this hugely promising development has promised more scalability, security, and longevity in the Ethereum network.

With so much coming, it was a beneficial and winning approach by Ethereum to make its name more prominent in the Crypto world. Likewise, the results were quite promising with the merge that took place on 15th Sept, 06:42:42 UTC at block 15537393.

Here’s a highlight of what went on after the Ethereum Merge made its mark in the cryptocurrency world:

• According to the statistics on TradingView, the price of Ethereum (ETH) saw a modest boost in response to the Merge in hourly metrics, and it is currently trading in the vicinity of $1,635.
• The co-founder of Ethereum, Vitalik Buterin, celebrated the merge with a tweet only a few moments after the much-await event. The tweet said: “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.”
• Since the news of the merge became public, companies that deal with ETPs, also known as Ethereum-based exchange-traded products, have begun implementing modifications to the merge to support the demand for and utilization of Ethereum. This plan had been under process since the merge was announced. The ETC Group was one of the several companies that modified their ETPs in response to the merge, and they also provided a “forked version” of their ETP based on ETH. Other companies also made adjustments accordingly.
• Even ETHW Core, a group representing proof-of-work miners, has indicated that they will be organizing a hard fork within the next twenty-four hours following the completion of the Ethereum Merge.
• The change of the network from PoW to PoS that occurred with the Ethereum Merge also provided a reason for a large number of influential people, artists, and members of the crypto and NFT community to celebrate this merge on social media using various methods like art, etc.

What’s Next?

Following the completion of the Merge stage, the remaining stages on the Ethereum technical roadmap are the “Surge,” “Verge,” “Purge,” and “Splurge,” respectively. It’s time to witness how these stages will unfold and benefit Ethereum and companies focused on Ethereum.

A Farewell to Miners:

Ethereum, released in 2015, improved upon the fundamental ideas behind Bitcoin by introducing smart contracts, which are essentially computer programs that record data on Ethereum’s network using blockchain technology. This served as the foundation for both (DeFi) and NFTs, managed primarily by Ethereum’s proof-of-work system. However, with the launch of the Proof-of-Stake system, it is finally time to say goodbye to the proof-of-work system, once pioneered by Bitcoin.