What was arguably the most highly-anticipated event in the cryptocurrency space over the past few years is now complete. Ethereum’s proof-of-work mainnet officially merged with the proof-of-stake Beacon Chain, marking the official transition of the entire protocol to PoS.
The Merge is Official
The Paris upgrade, which is more commonly referred to as “the Merge,” just went through at a Total Terminal Difficulty of 58750000000000000000000.
This marked the official transition of Ethereum from a proof-of-work consensus algorithm to one that’s governed by proof-of-stake. It’s also introducing entirely different token emission dynamics and tokenomics to the protocol that are expected to have considerable long-term effects on the entire ecosystem.
The Merge itself marks the consolidation of the consensus layer (formerly the Beacon Chain) and the execution layer (formerly the PoW chain).
Perhaps one of the impacts with the most significant economic implications for ETH holders is the fact that mining is officially halted. This will reduce the emission of fresh ETH to the market by some 90%, essentially reducing the amount of money needed to support current prices substantially.
Even though the Merge is now complete, it’s important to note that there’s still a long road ahead for Ethereum to fulfill the vision of its team.
What’s Next?
The promise of Ethereum’s transition to Proof-of-Stake is one that exceeds reduced ETH emissions and is more focused on optimizing the network for greater transactional throughput and scalability. This, however, won’t happen instantly.
As a matter of fact, there are four planned phases that the network will go through now that the Merge has finally happened.
These include:
- The Surge
- The Verge
- The Purge
- The Splurge
These all have their isolated purposes, but when put together, they aim to increase the overall capabilities of the network and make it more scalable, secure, decentralized, and user-friendly.
Now that the Merge is through, it’s important to remain as vigilant as ever. Here are five common scams related to Ethereum 2.0 that you should avoid and beware of.
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