The Merge Is Coming

The Merge Is Coming

It is September, 2022 and a major change in the world of cryptocurrencies and blockchains is happening. The?Ethereum?blockchain is merging with the Beacon Chain.

Yes, it is a big?deal and here is why.

In order for cryptocurrencies and blockchain to achieve mainstream status and be used in our daily lives, one thing was missing: scalability.

Until now, blockchain technology could process only a very limited number of transactions at any given moment. To put it in perspective, Bitcoin processes about 5 transactions per second (TPS). Ethereum did 3 TPS. Meanwhile, VISA does around 1,700 transactions per second on average (based on a?calculation derived from the official claim?of over 150 million transactions per day).

As you can imagine, that is a major drawback to blockchain technology. After the Merge (as it is called) the Ethereum blockchain will be able to process 100,000 transactions per second (TPS), compared to the 3 TPS we mentioned before. That’s according to the?Ethereum Blockchain’s co-founder?and main developer, Vitalik Buterin.

How can they achieve that?

They’re changing up how we will process transactions on the blockchain. There are two distinct methods of processing transactions -?Proof-of-Work (PoW) and Proof-of-Stake (PoS). One difference here is the amount of time and (computing) resources required. The other difference is the way the new blocks are generated. During the Proof-of-Work method, you have to solve a math problem which requires many specialized computers. You might have heard about mining farms which are consuming a significant amount of energy. That’s why.

Alternatively, the Proof-of-Stake is a type of consensus algorithm by which a cryptocurrency blockchain network aims to achieve distributed consensus.

This Merge has been in works for some time. In 2020, the Beacon Chain was created (Phase 0) and since then the preparation work has been underway. After the Merge (Phase 1), the work will continue to create multiple shared chains (Phase 2) to achieve high scalability.

There are however some disadvantages associated with Proof-of-Stake systems. One issue is that since block validators are chosen randomly from those holding stakes, if someone owns a large percentage of all tokens then they have a greater chance – although not guaranteed –?of being selected as a block validator. While this does not give them complete control over the network like in a?51% attack scenario, it could lead to centralization if allowed unchecked.

To any of you who own Ether, this transition should be completely seamless and no action is required. All the major exchanges agreed to stop processing any transactions during the Merge. Let's hope things work well.

As of writing this, the market cap of Ether is $210 billion, which would be about the GDP of Greece. It is a far cry from its highest market capitalization of $571.67 billion on November 9, 2021, but with better scalability and higher usage it has a very good chance to become a useful technology to conduct business. A new pattern is in the making.

Noah Mohamed

Full Stack T-shaped Digital Marketing Specialist | 6 Years of Experience | SEO, Content Marketing & ADS Specialist

2 年

Hi Vaclav, thanks for sharing! let's connect ??.

要查看或添加评论,请登录

Vaclav Vincalek的更多文章

  • AI Sand Castle?Trap

    AI Sand Castle?Trap

    This post will start as a very boring talk about science, but try to get through the first few lines, we will get into…

    12 条评论
  • Goodnight, Skype

    Goodnight, Skype

    And that wraps up the Skype journey. May 5th, 2025 will be the last time you’ll be able to use Skype.

    1 条评论
  • The House of?Alexa

    The House of?Alexa

    The wait is over. Amazon introduced Alexa+.

    1 条评论
  • Big Bada Boom, Christmas 2032?

    Big Bada Boom, Christmas 2032?

    There is a chance that Earth will get hit by an asteroid on Dec. 22, 2032.

    2 条评论
  • Robots. The next wave is coming

    Robots. The next wave is coming

    My dear reader, by now, you might be tired of reading another write up about AI. The promises of the imminent arrival…

    4 条评论
  • When the AI rubber hits the?road

    When the AI rubber hits the?road

    Large Language Models (LLMs) have stormed the front pages of mass media, thanks to OpenAI and its now famous ChatGPT…

    10 条评论
  • DeepSeek hysteria

    DeepSeek hysteria

    One of the advantages of writing a weekly newsletter is that you don’t have to react immediately to any breaking news…

    7 条评论
  • The pitfalls of AI?search

    The pitfalls of AI?search

    Before we resume our regular programming, I have to issue an apology to you, my dear reader. I have been misled and in…

    2 条评论
  • AI. In search of value, in search of?price

    AI. In search of value, in search of?price

    Now that we are on our way to spending billions of dollars on AI, the question of making at least some of the money…

  • The Face-AI-book

    The Face-AI-book

    I wanted to write something this week about the continuous moral decline of Facebook. But then I found something…

    1 条评论

社区洞察

其他会员也浏览了