Ethereum reports that the Merge Upgrade was successful.

Ethereum is a decentralized blockchain technology that enables the execution and verification of smart contracts. Participants can transact using smart contracts without the need for a central authority.

Participants have complete ownership and visibility over immutable, verifiable, and securely disseminated transaction records. Ethereum accounts send and receive transactions. In order for transactions to be processed on the network, senders must sign them and pay Ether.

According to Ethereum, the Merge upgrade was a success, and there will be more.

The Merge is a significant step toward lowering the amount of electricity required by the Ethereum blockchain, but more improvements are in the works.

According to the Ethereum Foundation, the final part of the Paris upgrade was completed at 2:45 p.m. Hong Kong time, bringing the long wait for the Ethereum network upgrade to an end.

The Merge will see the world's second-largest blockchain, with a market capitalization of US$200 billion, undergo a dramatic infrastructure overhaul, allowing it to use less energy while potentially increasing transaction times.

Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin acknowledged the significance of the event during a live-streamed Merge event, but stated that there is still much more to come.

"Let's go build out all the other components of that ecosystem and shape Ethereum into what we want it to be," he said. The Merge, in my opinion, exemplifies the gap between early-stage Ethereum and the Ethereum we've always hoped for.

The cryptocurrency Ether reached a high of $1,648 on Thursday before dropping 0.5% to $1,611 shortly after the Merge announcement.

In the three months leading up to the Merge, the market capitalization of the world's second-largest token increased by roughly 50%. However, more general macroeconomic concerns, such as rising interest rates in the United States, have recently slowed the cryptocurrency sector's growth.

In an interview with Forkast, Justin d'Anethan, Institutional Sales Director at digital asset trader Amber Group, stated that the macro narrative dragging on risk assets makes this a very interesting time for the Merge to take place. The Merge should be a very good or joyful time for bitcoin investors.

"I'm still generally enthusiastic about Ethereum," d'Anethan says, but "I wouldn't try to predict the timescale for the coming weeks or months because there are many unknowns."

Following the Merge, Ethereum's consensus architecture shifted from proof-of-work to proof-of-stake (PoS) (PoW). PoS requires users to validate blockchain transactions based on the amount of Ether they have staked in the network.

Bitcoin, the world's most popular cryptocurrency, uses the original PoW mechanism, which involves crypto miners validating transactions using energy-intensive computer farms.

Switching to PoS, according to the Ethereum Foundation, will reduce network energy consumption by 99.95%. According to Jonathan Victor, the head of NFT and Web3 storage for open-source research and development firm Protocol Labs, this is beneficial to Ethereum and the entire cryptocurrency industry as it comes under scrutiny amid a global push to decarbonize economies, in a written statement to Forkast.

He went on to say that this is especially problematic for non-fungible tokens (NFTs), the vast majority of which are hosted on Ethereum, and that most organizations are aiming for net zero by 2050, and that the Merge would bring ETH much closer to that goal. Even the most outspoken [NFT] detractors will be relieved by this exodus.

In the midst of The Merge's excitement and bustle, D'Anethan urged investors and the larger crypto community to remain calm.

Investors, according to d'Anethan, must be able to see through the hype and realize that this is not the end goal. "It paves the way for a slew of future Ethereum enhancements."

THE LONG HISTORY OF THE MERGE 2014: In the introduction to the Ethereum white paper, Vitalik Buterin states that proof-of-work will most likely have to give way to another mechanism in the future.

Ethereum was founded in 2015. Around 72 million ether coins were created in the first block. Buterin received 553,000 ether tokens.

In October 2020, Ethereum will launch a beacon chain deposit contract to measure public demand in proof-of-stake. After the merge, if you staked 32 ether (ethereum promises), you would become an ethereum transaction validator.

November 2020: The beacon chain reaches the 524,288 ether minimum required by Ethereum for the chain to be considered a working mechanism.

December 2020: The beacon chain is launched seven days after the staking barrier is breached. The chain is now being coded and tested to see if it can handle all Ethereum transactions.

In September 2022, the merger was completed.

On September 15, 2022, Ethereum switched from a proof-of-work (PoW) consensus mechanism to a proof-of-stake (PoS) consensus mechanism in a procedure known as "the Merge."

This transition occurred. As a result, Ethereum's energy consumption rate decreased by approximately 99.95 percent, resulting in an estimated 110 terawatt-hours of annual energy savings (110 billion kilowatt-hours). Users of Ethereum are not required to do anything in order for the upgrade to occur.

During the Merge, the Ethereum blockchain's proof-of-work mining method was replaced by the Beacon Chain. The Beacon Chain is a proof-of-stake blockchain network protected by validators who stake ether.