According to the latest data from the official website of Ethereum, the total pledge of the Ethereum Beacon Chain network recently exceeded the 10 million ETH milestone. The crypto community believes that the Ethereum 2.0 beacon chain will complete the integration with the Ethereum 1.0 network this year, also known as "The Merge". However, for the Ethereum community, can "The Merge" really solve many of the problems on the current network after that? Let's take a closer look at it in this article.
"The first stage is The Merge. The second stage is The Surge – something that can be fragmented and expanded. ”
The ethereum network is currently experiencing problems
The reason why Ethereum is eager to upgrade is mainly due to the many problems that exist in the current runtime, which seriously hinder the progress of the Ethereum blockchain. Listed below are a few of Ethereum's key issues:
1, high gas fees: "gas" is paid to the miners who provide computing power to the network. Gas fees are based on the degree of resource demand of the Ethereum network, and its market price is variable, and the higher the demand, the higher the gas fee. The higher the gas fee someone is willing to pay, the faster the transaction will be executed. This means that when the popularity of an app on Ethereum spikes, the gas price can be prohibitively high, and sometimes the cost of executing a transaction is even higher than the price of trading tokens. For example, at some point, the gas cost of purchasing a low-cost NFT may be higher than the value of the NFT itself.
2, consume a lot of electricity: At present, to build consensus on the Ethereum blockchain, it is necessary for nodes on the Ethereum network to perform complex operations and give answers, which is called "proof of work". The greater the usage of Ethereum, the greater the computational effort required to validate its blockchain, which will cause the nodes on the network to consume more electricity. This has also led to criticism of the Ethereum network, which operates with pollution and damages our natural environment.
3. Disk space problems: As the scale of the Ethereum network continues to expand, it becomes more and more difficult to run nodes. This is due to the fact that the history on the Ethereum blockchain takes up more and more disk space, which undoubtedly increases the difficulty of running a full node (by raising the cost of running one node), thus limiting the number of nodes on the network.
4. Network congestion problem: When the computing demand becomes high, Ethereum's low work efficiency will lead to network congestion in the communication between nodes, thereby slowing down the execution speed of smart contracts. Based on this congestion, applications running on the Ethereum network cannot be designed to be too complex.
What will change after "The Merge"?
Vitalik Buterin noted that when the ethereum mainnet for processing transactions and the beacon chain for staking are combined, all accounts, contracts, and transactions will run on the PoS chain, not on PoW.
"We already have a Kintsugi testnet, and it's been running for six weeks, and the only big project that hasn't been tested yet is optimistic sync."
We know that since the launch of the Kintsugi Merge testnet was announced last December, the Ethereum Foundation has received a lot of attention. The main purpose of the testnet is to test and discover what problems exist with the merged Ethereum.
With the merger of the Ethereum mainnet and beacon chain, Vitalik Buterin actually focuses more on the third phase, "The Verge". He explained that this phase is about verkle trees, a technique that makes it easier to validate Ethereum chains and run nodes. Vitalik Buterin adds:
"The fourth phase is The Purge, where something historic and something we used before and what we no longer need is removed from the protocol, which can make the Ethereum protocol much simpler."
It can be said that the major upgrade in 2021 paves the way for the future development of Ethereum. According to Vitalik Buterin, the Berlin hard fork and the London hard fork were the two most important upgrades. According to Vitalik Buterin, the London hard fork EIP-1559 upgrade not only reduces transaction fees, but also increases transaction speed.
Since the London hard fork, as of press time, Ethereum appears to have destroyed 1950,577.9 ETH. Not only that, but Ethereum will also be ready for the Ethereum "difficulty bomb" (a new mining mechanism to increase the difficulty of mining) launched in June 2022.
"Of course, the 'difficulty bomb' could have been postponed if necessary, but we still have some time."
As you will recall, the date for launching the EIP-4345 difficulty bomb has been postponed before. It was originally scheduled to start in December 2021 and was later postponed to May 2022. However, with the upgrade of Ethereum, PBS seems to be the focus of Vitalik Buterin's attention. Vitalik Buterin explains that from the perspective of Ethereum's long-term planning, "the fifth phase is The Splurge, which includes all the other important upgrades such as account withdrawal, PBS (PBS is the focus of our attention now), EVM upgrades, and so on." But if we can merge and shard correctly, we can solve the biggest and most important problems. ”
Can gas costs be reduced after "The Merge"?
The "Ethereum 2.0" upgrade will bring many changes and is one of the most anticipated developments in the history of the blockchain community. Judging from the information released by the Ethereum Foundation, Ethereum 2.0 will be completed in multiple stages and steps, but it is difficult to say whether the gas fee will be reduced in the end.
There is a lot of speculation in the Ethereum community that the gas fee will be lower after Ethereum moves to proof-of-stake ("The Merge"), but the Ethereum Foundation is not sure of this statement. In fact, gas fees are demand-based, and the computing space in each Ethereum block is limited; sharding may increase the computing power of the Ethereum network to reduce the cost, but according to the Ethereum Foundation's plan, the introduction of sharding will not be until at least 2023.
Some experts expect that whether the Ethereum gas fee can be reduced depends on the "Layer 2" applications built on the Ethereum network, which can do some independent computing work on their own, but also rely on Ethereum for basic consensus verification.
Arguably, the Ethereum upgrade and the impact it has on is complex, depending on a dynamic set of conditions – including network size, Ether price, demand for NFTs, and the situation of node operators – that change dramatically from day to day. As for how this will all unfold and what impact Ethereum's changes will have on the wider crypto world, let's wait and see.
Admittedly, Ethereum's conversion to proof-of-stake is indeed a groundbreaking move that may be emulated by other cryptocurrencies and may even prompt some organizations or governments to fully embrace cryptocurrencies. On the other hand, this approach can greatly promote the use of Ethereum and move cryptocurrencies towards a better future.
Part of this article is compiled from ambcrypto