History created in the crypto market as Ethereum Merge to proof-of-stake occurs

The Ethereum Merge has officially transpire, marking the full transition of the network to proof-of-stake (PoS).

The Ethereum proof-of-stake consensus mechanism will cut energy consumption by a massive 99.95% compared to the proof-of-work system.

The long-awaited Merge saw the merging of the Ethereum Mainnet execution layer and the Beacon Chain’s consensus layer at the Terminal Total Difficulty of 58750000000000000000000, On Sept. 15 at 06:44 UTC. It means the network will no longer rely on a proof-of-work consensus mechanism.

The Ethereum Foundation said the Merge will make the Ethereum network about 99.95% extra energy efficient and will set the stage for future scaling solutions, including sharding.

StarkWare President and co-founder Eli Ben-Sasson claimed that “the immediate importance of the Merge is the dramatic effect on energy consumption” while speaking to Cointelegraph,

Ben-Sasson also claims “the first step in a process that will lead to exceedingly widespread adoption of Ethereum,” stating:

“It starts a chain reaction of changes. The end result will be the very broad use of Ethereum’s computing power, and the general population using blockchain-based apps in many different areas of life.”

The Merge has come on the back of quite a lot of years of hard work from the Ethereum Foundation.

With the Merge complete, the “Surge,” “Verge,” “Purge” and “Splurge” are the final stages left on the Ethereum technical roadmap.

The Surge will intensify scalability for rollups through sharding, the Verge will achieve statelessness through Verkle trees, the Purge will eradicate historical data and technical debt, and the Splurge will involve a number of small miscellaneous upgrades.

Renowned designer Beeple celebrated the Merge with a sci-fi illustration.