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The Ethereum Merge is Set
The last testnet merge paved the way for the long awaited event.
The Goerli testnet on Ethereum had a successful merge the other day. This means the main chain is the only thing left to do before Ethereum becomes a Proof-of-Stake blockchain.
The terminal total difficulty has been set to 58750000000000000000000.
This means the ethereum PoW network now has a (roughly) fixed number of hashes left to mine.
bordel.wtf predicts the merge will happen around Sep 15, though the exact date depends on hashrate.
— vitalik.eth (@VitalikButerin)
Aug 12, 2022
September 15 has investors and enthusiasts waiting to see the result of the several year long process. Here are a few of the thing that will or will not change after the merge.
Staking will be way new blocks are mined.
Reducing energy consumption by more than 99.9%
Triple halving, this will cause the amount of ETH mined everyday to be cut in half 3 times. If network activity increase, ETH will become a deflationary asset.
NOT lower gas/transaction cost.
There has also been talks of a potential hard fork chain that will come about after the merge. Some miners may still want to mine the existing chain they're on which would cause there to be two chains, ETH and ETHW.
While this is a possibility, there are many large platforms like USDC, USDT, and Chainlink that said they will support the new chain. This means if miners were to continue on the old chain, no one would honor their redemptions of USDC or USDT
Will the Merge be a success? What would a failure exactly look like?