The Merge Upgrade, according to Ethereum, has been successfully finished!

For the purpose of running and certifying smart contracts, Ethereum is a decentralized blockchain platform. Participants can transact using smart contracts without the need for a centralized authority. Immutable, verifiable, and securely distributed transaction records are available to participants at all times.

Ethereum accounts are used to send and receive transactions. For the network to conduct a transaction, the sender must sign it and make a payment in ether.

According to Ethereum, the Merge upgrade was successful and more upgrades will come in the future.

The Merge is a significant advancement in reducing the amount of electricity that the Ethereum blockchain uses, but there are still lots of enhancements that are being considered.

The lengthy wait for the Paris update is over, according to the Ethereum Foundation, with the completion of the last phase at 2:45 p.m. Hong Kong time.

The Merge, a significant adjustment to the infrastructure of the second-largest blockchain in the world with a $200 billion market value, will enable it to use less energy while perhaps lengthening transaction times.

During a live-streamed Merge event organized by the Ethereum Foundation, co-founder of Ethereum Vitalik Buterin acknowledged the significance of the occasion but emphasized that there is still much more to come.

Let's develop all the other elements of that ecosystem and transform Ethereum into what we envision, he exclaimed. The Merge serves as an example of the difference between Ethereum in its early stages and the Ethereum that we have always intended [it] to be.

On Thursday, ether reached a high of $1,648 before dropping 0.5% to $1,611 after the Merge news.

The market capitalization of the second-largest token in the world has increased by around 50% during the previous three months prior to the Merge. However, the sector's recent growth has been hampered by more general macroeconomic worries such American inflation and rising interest rates.

The macro narrative that is driving down risk assets makes this a really exciting time for the Merge to take place, according to Justin d'Anethan, Institutional Sales Director at digital asset trader Amber Group, in an interview with Forkast. For cryptocurrency investors, the period following The Merge ought to be one of considerable anticipation or hope.

I'm still generally enthusiastic on Ethereum, but I wouldn't try to forecast what will happen in the coming weeks or months because there are so many unknowns, according to d'Anethan.

After the Merge, Ethereum's consensus method changed from a proof-of-work (PoW) system to a proof-of-stake (PoS) system (PoW). Users must authenticate blockchain transactions using the principle of proof-of-stake (PoS) in proportion to the quantity of Ether they have staked in the network.

The most well-known cryptocurrency in the world, Bitcoin, uses the original Proof-of-Work (PoW) algorithm, which necessitates validation by bitcoin miners using power-hungry computer farms.

The Ethereum Foundation predicts that switching to PoS will reduce network energy use by 99.95%. This is advantageous for Ethereum and the larger cryptocurrency industry, says Jonathan Victor, head of NFT and Web3 storage at open-source research and development company Protocol Labs, as it comes under scrutiny amid a global push to decarbonize economies.

According to him, this is especially problematic for non-fungible tokens (NFTs), the bulk of which are housed on Ethereum. The majority of businesses aim to achieve net zero by 2050, and with the Merge, ETH will get a great deal closer to this goal. Even the most ardent [NFT] opponents will feel more at ease after this relocation.

D'Anethan urged participants in The Merge as well as the larger cryptocurrency community to remain calm in the face of the uproar and enthusiasm.

Investors must be able to see through the hype and understand that this is not the end aim because "[it] sets the way for other potential Ethereum upgrades," according to d'Anethan.

THE LONG HISTORY OF THE MERGE

Proof-of-work would probably need to be updated in the future, according to Vitalik Buterin, who wrote the introduction to the Ethereum white paper from 2014.

In 2015, Ethereum was launched. About 72 million ether coins were created in the first block. There were 553 thousand of these ether delivered to Buterin.

In October 2020, Ethereum will launch a beacon chain deposit contract to gauge the level of interest in proof-of-stake. After the integration, you could become an Ethereum transaction validator by investing 32 ether (ethereum promises).

November 2020: The beacon chain receives the 524,288 ether minimum required by Ethereum for the chain to be recognized as a working mechanism.

In December 2020, seven days after the staking barrier has been crossed, the beacon chain is launched. To see if it can handle the full volume of Ethereum transactions, the chain will now be coded and tested.

In September 2022, the merger was successful.

Benefits of building on Ethereum With the native Solidity scripting language and the Ethereum Virtual Machine, Ethereum offers a highly versatile platform for creating decentralized applications.

The Ethereum protocol's maturity, which has brought forth a strong ecosystem of developer tools and established best practices, benefits developers of decentralized applications who deploy smart contracts on Ethereum.

The quality of the user experience for the typical user of Ethereum apps also reflects this maturity, with wallets like MetaMask, Argent, Rainbow, and others offering simple user interfaces for dealing with the Ethereum blockchain and the smart contracts that have been implemented there.

Since Ethereum has such a large user base, developers are more likely to put their services there, further solidifying Ethereum's position as the leading host for decentralized apps like DeFi and NFTs.

Future decentralized apps with higher transaction throughput requirements will be built on a more scalable network thanks to the backwards-compatible Ethereum 2.0 protocol, which is now under development.