<aside> 💡 URL: flint.money/learn/what-is-ethereum-merge

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<aside> 💡 Page Title: What is ‘The Merge’? Everything you should know about Ethereum’s long awaited upgrade

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<aside> 💡 Metadata: Despite months of delay, The Merge is finally here. But what does it mean? Will it impact gas fee and transaction times?

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What is ‘The Merge’? Everything you should know about Ethereum’s long awaited upgrade

Introduction

It’s 2022 and Ethereum is finally ready to hit the update. For the unknowns, Ethereum is a decentralized blockchain that supports smart contracts. It has a cryptocurrency called ether, which is the second-largest cryptocurrency in the world. To validate every transaction on the blockchain, Ethereum currently uses a process called ‘Proof of Work’.

If you haven’t already, click here to understand What is Proof of Work?

Proof of Work, a bitcoin native process, essentially means that to validate each transaction, miners have to solve some complex mathematical problem.

The problem with proof of work is that it’s not scalable and it is not sustainable. Proof of work consumes a lot of energy and also leads to slow speed in transactions. Hence, the developers decided to shift to a better concept called ‘Proof of Stake’.

Read about What is Proof of Stake? here, it will give you a comprehensive idea about what this event is all about.

Now, coming back,

Proof of Stake is a process to validate transactions where miners would stake their native crypto. It makes the network accessible to small miners, is more eco-friendly, and also makes transactions speedy.

About ‘The Merge’

The whole upgrading process of Ethereum to Ethereum 2.0 which would shift the validation process from ‘proof of work’ to ‘proof of stake’ is known as ‘The Merge’. It’s called ‘the merge’ because the current beacon change would merge with the Ethereum chain that we know of today without changing anything, hence giving Ethereum a new life. Mainnet will bring the ability to run smart contracts into the proof-of-stake system, plus the full history and the current state of Ethereum, to ensure that the transition is smooth for all ETH holders and users.

Pros of ‘The Ethereum Merge’

1. Firstly, the Ethereum upgrade would help developers to scale and speed up the transactions on the chain. This would result in bringing back projects which migrated to other layers 2 solutions such as Polygon.
2. The upgrade would lower the gas fee and the energy consumption on the network by 98%.
3. If the upgrade is successful, it would lead to the wider common adoption of the chain.

Cons of ‘The Ethereum Merge’