From ETH’s Merge to ‘surge, verge, purge, splurge’- Making sense of it all

The annual Ethereum community Conference (ETHCC) took place on 21 July in Paris. Ethereum [ETH] co-founder Vitalik Buterin addressed the audience at this conference and spoke about the long-term potential of the network.

The developer-focused conference saw Buterin speak of the upcoming “Merge,” which will see Ethereum’s transition from proof-of-work (PoW) to proof-of-stake (PoS).

Moreover, while describing the long- and short-term effects of the Merge, Buterin stated,

“After the merge, you will be able to design an Ethereum client that does not even know the proof-of-work phase has happened.”

He also went on to state that,

“At the end of this road map, Ethereum will be a much more scalable system. By the end, Ethereum will be able to process 100,000 transactions per second.”

According to him, post Merge, the protocol will be “55% complete” in terms of the overall evolution of the Ethereum network. Therefore, developers have a lot of work ahead of them. 

Change is the only constant

The intended “deep changes” are being made to make Ethereum a more potent and reliable network, according to Buterin. He informed the audience that following the integration, Ethereum will go through additional upgrades that he refers to as the “surge,” “verge,” “purge,” and “splurge.”

The surge refers to the addition of Ethereum sharding, a scaling solution that, according to the Ethereum Foundation will make layer-2 blockchains even more affordable.

It will also reduce the cost of rollups or bundled transactions, and make it simpler for users to run nodes that protect the Ethereum network. Buterin added that the Ethereum network will handle transactions more quickly after the surge is over.

The Verge will introduce “stateless clients” and “

Validators in a proof-of-stake network authenticate and verify transactions using locked-up or “staked” ETH.

To streamline storage and lessen network traffic, the Purge will help eliminate old data. Following the previous upgrades, there will be a Splurge that will consist of several smaller upgrades and fine-tuning to ensure seamless network operations.

Vitalik further claimed that accomplishing these decentralized goals is difficult because of the network’s complexity and how quickly it is evolving. But, he asserted, these network upgrades have long been anticipated by all parties.

Notably, the price of ETH increased by about 33% this week. The altcoin also crossed the $1,600 mark to trade at $1,628 at press time.