Ethereum has successfully completed its highly anticipated shift from proof-of-work (PoW) into proof-of-stake (PoS) in a process known as the Merge.
The plan was years in the making and has undergone a seemingly endless series of tests and tinkering. It finally happened after being one of the most anticipated and talked-about events in the crypto world this year. But now the event has passed, with Ethereum appearing to clear the technical hurdles presented by the transition.
“Ethereum has a chance now to be a productive, aligned, forward-looking technology compared to one that was rooted in high energy consumption and below par from a transaction or cost perspective,” Sean Ford, interim CEO of blockchain Algorand (which is also PoS), said to TechCrunch. “I’m optimistic about the industry’s chances.”
Although the Merge was a huge feat, there are plenty more upgrades planned for the Ethereum blockchain down the road. In July, Vitalik Buterin, co-founder of Ethereum, said the network will undergo further updates that rhyme with the Merge — Surge, Verge, Purge and Splurge.
“One of the beauties of the Merge that we see is Ethereum has a long technical road map, but it’ll never be complete,” Steven Goldfeder, co-founder and CEO of Offchain Labs (the developer of layer-2 rollup Arbitrum), said to TechCrunch. “There’s never a point where we’re done. The technology will only get better over time. We will continue to innovate and do better things.”
But what does this all really mean for the next era of the Ethereum network?