Ethereum is the talk of the entire crypto market at the moment. The asset has managed to break one milestone after the other this year alone, and while the market remains in a downturn, it will undoubtedly be one of the assets to look forward to when things flip bullish once more.
The biggest news surrounding Ethereum right now is its Merge. The upgrade, which will signify the final shift towards Ethereum’s proof-of-stake (PoS) consensus algorithm, is expected to be perhaps the biggest upgrade to the Ethereum blockchain in its history. And as developers continue to work out the details investors are also trying to grapple with what this could mean for the broader market landscape.
The Merge: What And Why?
As explained earlier, the Merge will signify the Ethereum blockchain’s final shift to PoS. The blockchain is one of the oldest and arguably the most popular in the market, but it was built using the proof-of-work (PoW) consensus algorithm. This meant that the blockchain had to rely on mining, just like Bitcoin.
Over the years, Ethereum has grown into a global blockchain network with multiple use cases. And as the application of blockchain technology has soared, so has the functionality of Ethereum itself. Today, millions of developers use Ethereum, and the blockchain is home to hundreds of thousands of platforms. From traditional businesses to fledgling new fields such as decentralized finance (DeFi) and non-fungible tokens (NFTs), Ethereum’s footprint is everywhere.
This increased popularity has been a blessing and a curse. On the one hand, it has made Ethereum incredibly popular. However, it has also led to scalability issues and rising gas fees.
Ethereum 2.0 is expected to be a solution to all of this. The evolution will bring several benefits to the blockchain, including sharding – a way of improving its scalability. With sharding, the Ethereum blockchain is expected to handle up to 100,000 transactions a second – up from about just 30 at the moment.
Just as well, the move to PoS means that the Ethereum blockchain could easily cut its carbon footprint.
According to some estimates, the blockchain’s carbon footprint could be reduced by up to 99.9% once this update is finished. And, the Merge is the final stage for…
