The Crypto World Can’t Wait for the ‘Ethereum Merge’

After almost six years of waiting, the Ethereum merge is finally set to take place in September this year. There will be two stages for Ethereum merge to be public in the crypto market- the first stage, Bellatrix, happening on September 6 and the final stage, Paris, happening between September 10 and September 20. If all goes according to plan, the Merge will take place around Sept. 15. The change would shift Ethereum to a more energy-efficient infrastructure, addressing the widespread criticism that crypto’s climate impact outweighs its possible benefits. As a result of the Ethereum merge, the blockchain will become 99.5 percent more energy efficient after shedding its power-hungry proof-of-work consensus mechanism. The merge is also believed to reduce processing times, lower transaction fees, and help the blockchain scale in the future.

What is Ethereum Merge?

At basic level, the merge (sometimes called Ethereum 2.0, Eth 2, or ETH 2.0) is an upgrade to the Ethereum blockchain that will reduce its environmental impact, increase security in the network, and enable Ethereum developers to introduce new features and increase the scalability of the chain. But if you are looking for a technical definition, mostly lifted from Ethereum.org: The Merge is an upgrade to the Ethereum platform that will merge the Ethereum Mainnet with the Beacon Chain, marking a transition from proof-of-work to proof-of-stake. If you’re not much aware of the crypto space, let me make this clear to you in the simplest terms. Computers consuming tons of electricity to power Ethereum are out, and they’re replaced by computers that consume dramatically less electricity. By Doing this, according to Ethereum Foundation, Ethereum’s energy consumption will be reduced by 99.95%. All that talk about NFTs not being green will be obsolete.

Is The Merge risky?

The Merge is a major upgrade of an extremely complex system. It could go wrong. Ethereum could run slowly for a while or even halt completely. There could be other unforeseen errors or issues. Chances of any of this happening are small, given all the testing that went into this event, but they are not zero. The Merge also changes how the entire Ethereum network is secured. In a proof-of-work system, it’s hard to cheat the system because it would require a lot of computational power to do so. In a proof-of-stake system, cheating the system would require amassing a huge amount of ETH. Ethereum’s developers claim proof-of-stake is secure, and it has been used in several other major blockchains, including Cardano and Solana, but there’s a degree of risk involved.

Will Ethereum Gas Become Cheaper?

Gas fees are the cost of conducting a transaction on Ethereum, and they can skyrocket during busy periods (like when an NFT project is minting), potentially adding hundreds of dollars to transaction costs. Some of the common misconceptions about The Merge are ideas that all of Ethereum’s problems – mainly, high gas fees and network speed – will get solved by The Merge. This isn’t true. The Merge is a multi-stage process, and this part only paves the way for optimizations down the road. Specifically, gas will not become cheaper following the Merge. Likewise, transaction speed will «mostly remain the same» after the Merge, according to Ethereum Foundation.

What Do You Need to do Ahead of The Merge?

If you own some Ethereum or an ERC-20 token (those are cryptocurrencies that run on Ethereum’s platform), be it in a software wallet, hardware wallet, or an exchange, you don’t need to do anything. If all goes well, the transition will just happen and Ethereum should keep ticking as before, without any downtime. Not only this but the ETH management has also created a bug bounty for crypto investors to identify any critical bug issue in the Ethereum 2.0 version by offering a reward of up to $250k, so it’s definitely worth trying your skills.  

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