Ethereum Merge done and dusted- assessing its ins, outs, and unseen

The much anticipated Ethereum [ETH] Merge has finally happened and has been announced successful. The transition to Proof-of-Stake (PoS) of the second most significant blockchain will now make ETH more energy efficient after years of delay. 

While the Merge occurred a few hours ago today (15 September), many milestones have been hit across different levels. Finally, ETH has achieved its mission to reduce its energy consumption by 99.95%.

First block mined- No destruction!

The most notable part was how the first ETH block occurred at exactly 6:42 am UTC. According to the reports, the first block was mined at a block height of 155373394 and only took seventeen seconds.

As for its size, the first PoS ETH block was 18,559 bytes at a mining difficulty of 58,750,003,716,588,352,816,469.

Source: GranitaAcademy

Interestingly, the Merge also created the first PoS block reward on the ETH chain. According to the Etherscan receipt, the first block reward was a remarkable 45.03 ETH.

While assessing the Beacon Chain report, it showed that 12,983 validators contributed to the first block mining and reward.

Source: Etherscan

Ready for the new challenge

As the Merge was happening, over 30,000 people in the crypto community tuned into an “Ethereum Mainnet Merge Viewing Party” hosted by the Ethereum Foundation on YouTube. The live event had in attendance crypto big wigs, including Ethereum founder Vitalik Buterin.  

Interestingly, the Ethereum head responded to some questions raised by a few attendees. When asked what Ethereum plans were post-Merge, Vitalik said that the ETH surge, verge, purge, and splurge were already in the works.

According to him, these events were happening at parallel times. He also noted that they formed part of the sharding process expected to provide scaling solutions for Ethereum. Vitalik also said, 

“The Proof-of-Stake (PoS) mechanism will make blocks finalize more quickly, and hopefully, the protocol is easier to secure. A whole bunch of protocol improvements are also happening. In solving scalability, we are going to see a bunch of privacy applications start coming up in the next couple of years”.

I want only highs

Despite reaching new all-time highs, Ethereum Classic’s [ETC] hashrate soared to another incredible level as the Merge was pronounced successful. According to 2Miners.com, ETC’s hashrate had surged over 75% to reach 133.59 Terahash per second (TH/s) at press time.

Source: 2Miners.com

Other protocols, including Ravencoin [RVN] and Conflux [CFX] also spiked from their previous 24-hour levels in hashrate.

After the merge of Ethereum, the hashrate of ETC soared to 92.48TH/s, a 24h increase of 55.17%; the hashrate of RVN soared to 10.092TH/s, a 24h increase of 35.463%. CFX soared to 1.6158 TH/s, a 24h increase of 55.74%. https://t.co/71M0ZxcKyW

— Wu Blockchain (@WuBlockchain) September 15, 2022

In other parts, there have been significant changes as per on-chain metrics. According to Glassnode, the number of addresses HOLDing ETH reached the highest point in sixteen months. At press time, it had risen as high as 6,516.

Source: Glassnode

As per the funding rate, a lead on-chain analyst at Glassnode observed ETH traders with short positions were paying over 280% to remain in shorts. Despite the move, ETH remained in consolidation at around $1,600.

Short eth traders paying 280% to stay short. pic.twitter.com/gwRG4g3cln

— _Checkɱate ?⚡??☢️?️ (@_Checkmatey_) September 15, 2022

According to its effect on the DeFi ecosystem, DeFiLlama revealed that the overall Total Value Locked (TVL) had plunged by 27.52%, with its worth at $23.75 billion.