Ethereum’s Groundbreaking Merge Is Finally Around The Corner — ETH Due For An Explosive Move

• Ethereum’s transition to Proof-of-Stake is one step closer and the experts are excited over the effects it will have on the network.
• The Ropsten testnet merge was a giant leap towards the transition and the final sprint is underway.
• Gas fees and spikes in values are part of the range of features that Ethereum’s community is looking up to.

Ethereum 2.0 is becoming a reality with the Merge on Ropsten scheduled for June 8th. Amid the buzz, the experts share their thoughts about the upcoming upgrade coming to the network.

Say hello to the Merge

Tim Beiko, Ethereum’s lead developer announced the Ropsten merge, the moving of “Ethereum’s longest lived PoW” to Proof-of-Stake. Beiko revealed that with this latest development, The Merge is scheduled to occur on June 8th, sparking a wave of excitement amongst community members.

The Merge is the second of three phases and will combine the beacon chain with the current Ethereum mainnet. The beacon chain introduced staking to the blockchain and is a key component of the network’s push to Proof-of-Stake. The Merge lays the foundation for Shard Chains, an answer to the Ethereum network’s quest for scalability as operations will be spread across 64 different chains.

“Right now, the key thing to watch for Ethereum is the Merge as it changes from Proof-of-Work to Proof-of-Stake,” Ian Ballina, CEO of Token Metrics. “This is a fundamental catalyst event that will make Ethereum potentially deflationary and this could change the entire climate of crypto assets.”

Kraken’s CEO Jesse Powell has stated that he is not fazed by the slow space of the ‘Merge’ development because of the belief that “success is more important than speed.” Experts are particularly interested in the amount of energy that will be saved in a transition to PoS especially as PoW systems like Bitcoin have caught a lot of flak for their impact on the environment.

The Merge is also hailed by experts as the answer for Ethereum’s soaring gas fees that reached astronomically high levels. Ethereum’s merge has been hailed for its deflationary characteristics leading to Bitwise’s Chief Investment Officer, Matt Hougan noting that it could bring double-digit returns to “yield-starved investors”.

Ready before it begins

Ahead of the proposed transition, Ethereum is now the most staked crypto asset with a staking market cap of $23.34 billion, according to data from StakingRewards. It had held this position since the start of the year and is touted by the experts to extend its lead over other assets.

Ethereum’s co-founder, Vitalik Buterin gave a heads-up to users ahead of the merge to ensure that their decentralized applications (DApps) were in line with the new upgrades.

“Remember that you should always test your dapp with at least one non-metamask wallet (eg. Brave, Status browser),” Buterin wrote on Twitter. “Make sure your dapp conforms to ethereum standards, and not just to accidental properties of one particular wallet”.

“If you run a node, are a validator, or an infra/tooling provider, this is the first time to familiarize yourself with the transition and (better late than never!) what a post-merge node is like,” said Beiko ahead of the Merge.