The Ethereum merge is here 👀🎉

Author

Decentra Daily
September 14, 2022

Today is a big day in the history of blockchains. One day you'll sit your grandkids down and tell them how Vitalik Buterin and his merry bunch of Ethereum devs changed the world. The merge is upon us. 

Estimated read time: 3 minutes 45 seconds

Today's stories:

  • The Ethereum merge

  • ETHW to go live the day after the merge

  • Inflation hits BTC and ETH

  • Top NFT sales of the day

The Ethereum merge

This may be the biggest event in crypto history, and we are living and breathing through it. I'm so f*cking excited.

The merge is when the Ethereum blockchain moves from a proof-of-work (PoW) to a proof-of-stake (PoS) consensus mechanism. Let's just hope it isn't a POS. 

The PoS system is meant to be more secure, less energy intensive, and provide a better environment for ETH to scale. 

Ethereum's merge is expected to cut the network's energy use by over 99%, removing one of the largest hindrances to scaling, and positive sentiment in mainstream media.

The merge will initiate a plan that will take Ethereum from 12 to 100,000 transcations per second.

We were going to write an eloquent post on all the technical aspects of the merge, but then realized you can read about it all here on the Ethereum organization's website. Instead, we're going to share the best or most entertaining tweets relating to the merge.

From the founder of Aku, made us LOL: 

@cmsintern made a video you need to watch - The Merge Vitalik's Hammer 🍆:

Here's a great informational thread from @0xfoobar:

Here's a comprehensive thread by @SalomonCrypto on the Ethereum roadmap (the merge is just the start):

If you want to keep an eye on the merge countdown timer, you can find it here! Enjoy the fireworks folks. 

ETHW to go live the day after the merge

EthereumPoW, the group planning a 3rd fork of the Ethereum chain after the merge, have released more details about their plans.

According to a thread tweeted on Monday, ETHW Mainnet will launch a day after the merge, with a 1-hour countdown timer leading up to the release of the info needed to start mining and connect nodes to the chain:

Inflation hits BTC and ETH

The Bureau of Labor Statistics released its latest Consumer Price Index (CPI) figure – an estimate of inflation calculated by looking at the prices of a wide range of goods.

According to the CPI, general prices are up 8.3% compared to last year, and 0.1% since last month, meaning that inflation doesn’t seem to be going anywhere anytime soon.

Shortly after the CPI release, Bitcoin and Ethereum fell 5% and 6%, alongside drops in other markets like the S&P 500.

It’s no secret that crypto has been tracking with the stock market and other traditional assets for some time. Right now, they seem more correlated than ever:

August’s numbers are lower than June when inflation hit 9.1%, but we’re still experiencing some of the steepest price increases of the last 40 years.

Volatility is making it hard to predict how ETH will track after the merge, with Ethereum regularly trending in the mainstream news alongside grim predictions from economists.

Top NFT sales of the day

  1. @BoredApeYC #4963 - 89.99 ETH ($141,695.05)

  2. @BoredApeYC #3041 - 68 ETH ($116,732.91)

  3. @BoredApeYC #3015 - 64.6666 WETH ($101,822.73)

  4. @BoredApeYC #8941 - 55 WETH ($86,601.04)

Headlines of the day

Disclaimer: Nothing in this article/newsletter should be considered financial advice. The purpose is to inform readers of the current trends and news in the web3 space. We encourage every reader to do their own research and not act upon information put forth by Decentra Daily.