Business News

Ethereum completes ambitious merge upgrade, shifts to proof-of-stake

In a moment that will go down as a historical milestone for the crypto world, the Ethereum merge transition took place on Thursday.

The years-in-the-making upgrade shifted the prominent blockchain from a proof-of-work to model proof-of-stakeeliminating the energy-intensive process known as mining from Ethereum.

“I am absolutely excited to be exited from the proof-of-work era,” Ethereum creator Vitalik Buterin said during the Ethereum mainnet merge viewing party zoom. “Proof-of-stake has been a dream for the Ethereum ecosystem since pretty much the beginning.”

The critical moment came at around 3 am EST, which is when the “merge block” finalized on the Ethereum proof-of-stake blockchain. Although this finalization is crucial and indicative of a successful transition, Ethereum developers and researchers will continue to monitor the network for hours to ensure the proof-of-stake blockchain is stable and healthy.

“Once we [have] finalized the transition period, the heavy lifting has been done,” Ethereum developer Marius van der Wijden recently told Fortune. But “Sometimes small bugs only trigger after a couple of days.”

Bugs or not, the merger is a big feat for Ethereum and its community.

Until now, many onlookers questioned whether Ethereum developers could even pull off the merge at all, as it has been delayed multiple times, and a shift of this scale, on a running network of this size, has not been done before.

Supporters of the merger have long been excited for the upgrade, with one key driver being environmental impact. Post-merge, Ethereum’s ecological footprint will decline over 99%.

However, the merger will not address other key criticisms of Ethereum. It will not make Ethereum cheaper or faster to use, as the shift to proof-of-stake does not expand network capacity.

Investors also won’t be able to withdraw their staked Ether—tokens they have deposited in exchange for return—immediately after the merger occurs, but will have to wait six to 12 months until another update, known as Shanghai, goes into effect.

Nevertheless, those behind the merger, including Buterin, promise that it is a “critical precursor” to other upgrades that will help scale the network.

Development wise, Buterin said in the past that Ethereum will be “up to 55% complete” after the mergerwith other phases happening in parallel known as the “surge, verge, purge, and splurge.”

But, for now at least, the merge transition is complete.

Sign up for the Fortune Features email list so you don’t miss our biggest features, exclusive interviews, and investigations.


Source link

Related Articles

Back to top button