Co-founder Vitalik Buterin joined the “Ethereum Mainnet Merge Viewing Party” livestream, organized by the Ethereum Foundation, as the huge Ethereum (ETH) Merge neared its conclusion and offered his closing remarks.
Buterin said he is “absolutely excited about being exited from the proof-of-work era.”
The co-founder continued by saying that it has been planned for years to make the network’s historic switch from proof-of-work (PoW) to proof-of-stake (PoS).
“[It] has obviously been a dream for the Ethereum ecosystem since pretty much the beginning. We started the proof-of-stake research with that blog post on Slosher back in January 2014.”
Buterin argues that the laws of physics are being reinvented by The Merge. PoW uses functionalities found in everyday objects like hardware, electricity, and computers to function. In contrast, PoS virtualizes everything, “basically letting us create a simulated universe that has its own laws of physics.”
According to Buterin, the exorbitant expenses and enormous energy consumption are two of the primary drivers of the decision. According to claims, The Merge significantly reduces energy use by 99.95%.
He added that this will benefit “non-environmental externalities” as well as the environment, which has been a heated topic among environmentalists regarding the crypto area. The price increase of GPUs brought on by ETH mining was used as an example.
The Merge finally took place on September 15 at 06:42:42 UTC at block 15537393 shortly after Vitalik’s brief appearance in the livestream. At a Terminal Total Difficulty of 58750000000000000000000, the execution and consensus layers of the Ethereum mainnet were combined. The network no longer depends on a PoW consensus process as a result of the Merge.
Buterin congratulated the community and ushered in the next era of Ethereum via Twitter:
And we finalized!
— vitalik.eth (@VitalikButerin) September 15, 2022
Happy merge all. This is a big moment for the Ethereum ecosystem. Everyone who helped make the merge happen should feel very proud today.
With the help of these new optimizations, users and developers may scale the network in ways that weren’t feasible or sustainable in the past. This is a critical action for accelerating the use of decentralized technology and bringing the subsequent billion people into the ecosystem.
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