On Thursday, 15th September, 2022, the most awaited upgrade on Ethereum network—The Merge—finally took place. The event was one of the most significant instances that happened within the crypto industry. This could be understood by the notion that people even considered it as significant as placing the genesis block of bitcoin. Although the Merge has its significance, not as the previous example but it has.
In the whole history of cryptocurrency and blockchain tech, it was seen as the first upgrade of this scale. For the very first time it happened when a behemoth sized network like Ethereum went through a transition in its consensus mechanism. Earlier an energy extensive proof-of-work to relatively much energy efficient proof-of-stakes. After the transition, energy consumption of Ethereum is expected to drop by approx 99.95%, that’s a marvelous decrease.
One prominent and crucial question alongside the Merge upgrade was its effect on crypto asset’s price and more importantly its effect on crypto investments. Many believed that Ethereum would get its position back to hold the most unique projects over its platform, which for quite some time was not happening given the other blockchains.
For instance, famous crypto educator and YouTuber Hashoshi said during his podcast—Crypto Over Coffee—he believes the market will see a positive reaction following the merge. This would happen simply due to the increased transaction speed along with better security and scalability within the network. Moreover, a reduction of over 98% of its energy consumption would also be one crucial factor behind it, he added.
Crypto analyst and former crypto strategist at Fundstrat Global Advisors, Armando Aguilar said the altcoins related to Ethereum are likely to see a surge in their price following the upgrade. He said it will create an optimistic environment for the projects around the Ethereum—Polygon, Arbitrum, and several others.
Aguilar further added to the growing pressure on competitive projects like Solana, Cardano and Polkadot, who were earlier said to be potential Ethereum killers. This was simply due to way better utilities than the competition in terms of speed, scalability and gas fees, etc.
Source: https://www.thecoinrepublic.com/2022/09/17/how-significant-is-the-merge-upgrade-on-ethereum/