There are now a lot of expectations from the wider Ethereum community as many will now look to test out the capabilities of the new Proof-of-Stake protocol.
For years, many have anticipated the Merge of the Ethereum network’s Beacon Chain with the mainnet, and today, the transition to Proof-of-Stake was successfully recorded. The Ethereum blockchain has now been ushered into a new era, one that will see network validators replace miners, a provision that has been pitched as one that will generally make the protocol more secure.
“We merged! What a surreal feeling after working on the beacon chain for two years and the merge for two years. This was the most complex project I’ve ever participated and it wouldn’t have been possible without all the brilliant minds. History was made today! Congrats!,” said terence.eth, one of the developers who worked on the merge.
We merged! What a surreal feeling after working on the beacon chain for two years and the merge for two years. This was the most complex project I've ever participated and it wouldn't have been possible without all the brilliant minds. History was made today! Congrats! 🐼
— terence.eth (@terencechain) September 15, 2022
The new Proof-of-Stake (PoS) protocol spells many good tidings for the Ethereum protocol as a whole. First, it reveals that nothing is impossible as the transition was likened to changing the engine of an airplane mid-flight. Overhauling the Ethereum protocols per its major validation model was ambitious, and its success has set a precedence for other related Proof-of-Work (PoW) networks like Bitcoin.
With the new Ethereum, energy efficiency is now considered one of its core features as it is branded as a chain that is 99% more energy efficient than the old chain. Scalability is also a major upgrade that was introduced into the new Ethereum chain, and overall, the energy efficiency of the network is bound to be greatly enhanced.
The merge was completed when Ethereum’s mainnet attained the “terminal total difficulty” or TTD, a point at which the generation of the Ether tokens was practically impossible.
Following this point, the transition was closely watched in the 12 minutes that followed. Within this time, the protocol missed just a block, which corresponds to two epochs (periods of 32 slots each), and successfully reached finality. This finality was the major benchmark that determined whether the merge was successful or not.
Ethereum Proof-of-Stake Era
There are now a lot of expectations from the wider Ethereum community as many will now look to test out the capabilities of the new Proof-of-Stake protocol. While the developers acknowledged the decentralized applications and smart contracts hosted on the old PoW protocol also transitioned successfully, we may see more non-ethereum native platforms choosing to migrate to the largest smart contract blockchain in the world.
On the part of investors, we can also expect more institutional funds inflows into the system as the energy efficiency outlook of the blockchain now implies that it can align with most corporations’ ESG standards.
Though mildly, the merge spelled a very good omen for Ethereum as the price has reversed its negative trends and is now looking more bullish. At the time of writing, the coin was changing hands at $1,602.16, up 0.89% in the past 24 hours according to data from CoinMarketCap. Now that the merge is live, many are projecting it will strengthen the price of Ethereum in the near future.
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