Mainstream outlets are starting to pick up on the significance of next week’s Ethereum Merge, describing it as a “major overhaul” that could either accelerate crypto adoption or send disastrous shockwaves across the market should it fail.
The Merge has been in the making since the original Ethereum white paper and involves moving from an electricity-intensive proof-of-work (PoW) consensus mechanism to an efficient proof-of-stake (PoS) without any significant disruptions to the blockchain.
American business publication Forbes called the no-downtime upgrade akin to “[changing] the engine of a spaceship mid-flight,” and Swan Bitcoin CEO Cory Klippsten made a similar comment to the Wall Street Journal, stating the upgrade is like “trying to fix an airplane in mid-flight.”
Some outlets stressed the upgrade could be fraught with risk, sharing concerns that one wrong move could “prove disastrous” for the future of the network and the decentralized applications (DApps) on the Ethereum blockchain.
British newspaper the Evening Standard suggested crypto traders have been “holding their breath” ahead of the upcoming Merge, as a failed upgrade could put the entire cryptocurrency ecosystem “at risk.”
The Ethereum network is responsible for the majority of the $150 billion stablecoin market cap, and around $33 billion in total value locked by Ethereum-based decentralized applications (DApps), according to Defillama.
Dr. Anna Becker, CEO, and co-founder of EndoTech told the Standard that it will be “quite troublesome for the industry to survive” if something were to go wrong which leads to a halt of the blockchain.
“Ethereum is the infrastructure for many companies to manage their blockchains, so if something goes wrong we have the halt of the industry […] it will be quite troublesome for the industry to survive this period.”
The Washington Posts suggested that as the proof-of-stake mechanism is “less battle-tested”…
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