Breaking: A historic day for the cryptocurrency industry as Ethereum switches to proof-of-stake.

When compared to the proof-of-work method, the Ethereum proof-of-stake consensus mechanism will drastically reduce energy usage by 99.95%.

The network has officially switched over to proof-of-stake as a result of the Ethereum Merge (PoS).

The long-awaited Merge took place on September 15 at 06:42:42 UTC at block 15537393, merging the Beacon Chain’s consensus layer and the Ethereum mainnet execution layer at the Terminal Total Difficulty of 58750000000000000000000, which means the network will no longer rely on a proof-of-work (PoW) consensus mechanism.

Following the Merge, hourly indicators for Ethereum (ETH) show a modest increase, with the price now hovering around $1,635, according to data from TradingView.

According to the Ethereum Foundation, the Merge will increase the energy efficiency of the Ethereum network by 99.95% and pave the way for sharding and other potential scaling solutions in the future.

Moments after the momentous change took place, Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin tweeted to celebrate the Merge:

Eli Ben-Sasson, co-founder and president of StarkWare, stated that “the Merge’s immediate relevance is the huge influence on energy usage.”

Additionally, it is “the first step in a process that will lead to extraordinarily widespread acceptance of Ethereum,” according to Ben-Sasson, who added:

“It causes a series of modifications. The eventual consequence will be a highly widespread usage of Ethereum’s computational power and widespread adoption of blockchain-based applications by the general public in several spheres of life.

The Ethereum Foundation has worked diligently for many years in order to bring about The Merge.

Businesses that issue exchange-traded products (ETPs) based on Ethereum have been quite active implementing their own modifications regarding the Merge. In case there is considerable support for a PoW fork after the Merge, the business has created a “forked version” of its ETH-based ETP, according to Bradley Duke, CEO of the European cryptocurrency ETP issuer ETC Group.

Duke continued, “We assume the free market will decide what should live and what should not if enough people rally behind a fork for whatever reason.

The action has begun! Where to watch the livestream of the Ethereum Merge

The “Surge,” “Verge,” “Purge,” and “Splurge” are the last steps on the Ethereum technical roadmap once the “Merge” is finished.

The Purge will get rid of old data and technical debt, the Surge will boost scalability for rollups through sharding, the Verge will accomplish statelessness with Verkle trees, and the Splurge will feature a variety of modest random improvements.

There was resistance to one of the major changes in blockchain history. Within 24 hours following the Merge, ETHW Core, an organization that represents proof-of-work miners, will launch a hard fork.

Renowned artist Beeple created a futuristic artwork to commemorate the Merge:

On Thursday at 06:42:42 UTC, the Ethereum Merge took occurred formally, switching the network from PoW to PoS at block 15537393.