Tomorrow is when the Ethereum Merge will take place. The impending Merge of the Ethereum mainnet with the Beacon Chain is known as the eagerly awaited Ethereum Merge, for those who are unaware.
What may be one of the most revolutionary events in the brief history of blockchain technology has set the Web3 community ablaze with thrills. However, this overly excited a few people in the neighborhood, leaving them with some false perceptions of the event.
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First, some users anticipated that the de-facto NFT blockchain's efficiency improvements would reduce or even eliminate gas fees one must expect to be pay for each transaction on the network. But, sadly, this is a misconception. Following the Merge, gas prices as we currently know them will continue to exist. This is due to the fact that a number of planned developments for Ethereum will continue after the upcoming Merge.
Second, The Merge won't make transactions on the Ethereum's blockchain faster, despite the fact that PoS blockchains typically operate more quickly than their PoW equivalents. Since the Ethereum team has pledged "zero downtime" for the upcoming transition, you may not recognize it when it comes up. The marginal improvements in block time are characterized as "unlikely to be noticed by users" on the Ethereum website, which also notes that the 10 percent increase in block production time.
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Thirdly, staked ETH will be held captive until the anticipated Shanghai update sometime in 2023, according to the Ethereum website. But things don't stop there. All staking rewards and freshly formed ETH will remain locked on the Beacon chain following the merge. As a result, users won't be able to cash out staked ETH for some time. Following the merge, you will need to maintain a minimum of 32 ETH locked away in order to become a partaker on the Ethereum network.
Finally, The Merge does not provide a quick fix for the environmental issues with blockchain. According to a recent White House report, Ethereum currently accounts for 20 to 39 percent of the global energy consumption of the blockchain sector. However, the highest figure is Bitcoin's contribution to the energy consumption of the blockchain sector, which marks a whopping 77 percent.
The Ethereum Merge marks an important beginning of NFTs' eventual downfall as a potentially harmful environmental influence, at the very least. Let's hope that the Merge inspires other blockchain players, especially Bitcoin, to adopt a similar strategy. After all, that's the only direction we can follow to take the internet to the next level and realize its maximum potential.