Ethereum Merge: The most anticipated upgrade on Ethereum blockchain

[Xal0lex]

Will Ethereum sustain its current bullish trend during and after this merge?

This event is very difficult to predict in the short term. The reaction of miners and the community may be unexpected. ETH began to flow frequently to exchanges, maybe holders are getting ready to sell ETH on the background of the continuing growth. There is also news that the community is considering a PoW branch of ETH, which can cause a split in the network, as it was with ETC.

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[Sayeds56]

https://thetimeshub.in/michael-saylor-allowed-the-instability-of-ethereum-in-the-next-three-years/20500/
Michael Saylor allowed the instability of Ethereum in the next three years
"Saylor noted that it is important for institutional investors to see the finished version of the protocol that works without hacks on over 5–10 years. Massive upgrades at The Merge level open up new opportunities for hackers, he added."

This is a huge event which can potentially attract large amount of funds in DEFI sector. What is happening in Ethereum makes it more  secure, stable,scale able, energy efficient and will lower transaction fee. it is going to transform into an asset that will compel mega institutions to make huge investment in Ethereum based protocols.

[nullius]

Ethereum as the most actively developed blockchain [...]

It’s not.  Bitcoin is; but you obviously are not a developer.  I follow Bitcoin Core development, and I am familiar with the codebases of some altcoins; I know first-hand whereof I speak.

[...] needs regular upgrades and the introduction of Ethereum merge will help to realize this, and will reduce the present energy consumption by over 99%, and increase sustainability and security within the blockchain as the proof-of-stake mechanism will be the order of the day as it fades off "proof-of-work" system.

Will Ethereum sustain its current bullish trend during and after this merge?

Since you are so very worried about legalities, I am curious to know your opinion of the regulatory risk that Proof-of-Stake will be found to be a securities offering (Axios, 2022-07-27).  The Axios article that I thereby linked was sent to me by someone in a discussion I started about this:  I think that POS is obviously an illegal unregistered securities scheme, besides being otherwise a reprehensible scam for plutocratic financial mass-manipulation.  Since American SEC Chair Gensler is only willing to say that Bitcoin is outside his agency’s jurisdiction (Axios, 2022-06-28), I think the writing is pretty much on the wall:  Ethereum is preparing to commit regulatory suicide.

The 27 July Axios article linked above was sparked by a tweet from a law professor, Adam Levitin of Georgetown University:
https://twitter.com/AdamLevitin/status/1550990967670554624

Professor Levitin pretty much just confirmed what I had already been saying:

Adam Levitin @AdamLevitin
Jul 23

Something no one is talking about: after the Merge, there's will be a strong case that Ether will be a security. The token in any proof of stake system is likely to be a security.

Jul 24
I've gotten some pushback here, so let me elaborate. "Security" includes an "investment contract." "Investment contract" is defined by SCOTUS in Howey as a K for investment in a common enterprise where profits are expected "solely from the efforts" of a third party. 2/

Howey speaks of an investment of "money," but that has always been interpreted just to mean an investment of value. Putting up a stake readily satisfies this element. 3/

The common enterprise element is also readily met with staking: the whole validation system requires multiple parties. That's the pooling (i.e., the more demanding interpretation of common enterprise--horizontal commonality). 4/

The expectation of profit is clear enough too--stakers get rewards. /5

So that brings us to the last element: the profits are expected to be derived "solely from the efforts" of others. In Howey, SCOTUS said "solely" a couple of times. And if that's the measure of things, then staking will not meet the test b/c the staker is also a participant.6/

But lower courts have basically read "solely" out of Howey, at least for things like multi-level distribution pyramids, where participants do have to try to recruit more marks. 7/

Basically Courts of Appeals (2nd, 9th, among others) have read "solely" as being more likely "primarily" or "significantly". And SCOTUS hasn't disagreed. It discussed the issue in a 1975 opinion without taking a position. 8/

Given that what any individual staker contributes relative to the total sum of the efforts in the enterprise is probably quite limited, I suspect the "solely [=primarily] from the efforts" of others element is met. 9/

Now none of this answers the trickier question (imho) of who the "issuer" is when you're dealing with a decentralized system. But that's part of the broader problem of how to fit decentralized systems into a person-based legal system. 10/10

Whenever this argument eventually comes before a judge, I would be very surprised if POS tokens are not found categorically to be securities—both in the United States, and in other jurisdictions around the world.  They patently are securities, no matter how POS dupes and shills may try to evade the basic nature of the system.  To see what I see, regulators and courts just need some time to catch up with a new nexus of law, technology, and economics.

For my part, I’ll just be holding my Bitcoin, munching popcorn, and saying, I told you so. 😼

How does proof of stake increase security of the Ethereum blockchain as compared to the proof of work, which has pretty much been solid since the inception of the network?

Simple answer:  It won’t.  I have not-insignificant technical expertise in Byzantine fault-tolerant distributed consensus systems; that is my technical opinion, as well as my experience with both POW and POS:

• This is POW:  In 2017, a corrupt faction of hostile miners dominated by Jihan Wu/Bitmain maliciously attempted to usurp Bitcoin.  Their attacks included both economic attacks (forking Bitcoin), and in November 2017, an attempt to manipulate hashpower and difficulty adjustment to kill off the Bitcoin mainnet.  That last was a technical attack on Bitcoin’s POW security—on the POW security mechanism itself.  They failed in all attacks.
  
  

  I have already stated that the ASIC monopoly and mining cartel are much more dangerous than any kind of scaling issues. Just so that we are clear, all these idiots in altcoins parading "we are the best, we will win next" will get crushed. This is the time to be watching and learning from Bitcoin, i.e. how Bitcoin combats and resists malicious actors such as Bitmain.
  

• This is POS:  In May of 2022, a Do Kwon and a colluding cartel of big DPOS companies executed a contentious hardfork of the Terra blockchain, against massive community opposition.  POS is a centralized system for the benefit of insider whales, falsely advertised under a thin veneer of fake “decentralization”.

I followed both events closely at the time.  All of my theories about POW were empirically proved in 2017.  In 2022, I was actually surprised by how easy it was for a group of whales to rule a POS blockchain as an oligarchy:  POS is worse than I had thought!

Few Bitcoiners, and almost no altcoiners understand the way that Bitcoin’s Nakamoto Consensus actually works.  They therefore are easily misled to believe that POS can replace POW.  It can’t.  It does not even achieve approximately the same objectives.

Ethereum is already significantly centralized—for instance, its ecosystem is substantially dependent on the central infrastructure of a single service, Infura, which is owned by a U.S.-based company in American jurisdiction, ConsenSys.  Ethereum already cannot be compared to Bitcoin’s decentralization.  In its consensus system, insofar as I can see, POW Ethereum is already much more centralized than POW Bitcoin.  Ethereum’s switch to POS will further consolidate its centralization.

I'm not part of the coding team,

Obviously.

[EarnOnVictor]

Ethereum as the most actively developed blockchain [...]

It’s not.  Bitcoin is; but you obviously are not a developer.  I follow Bitcoin Core development, and I am familiar with the codebases of some altcoins; I know first-hand whereof I speak.

I advise you to go for more learning and stop behaving as if you know it all, I know your type. I repeat, Ethereum is the most actively developed blockchain. I am not a coder like I had iterated, yet I research a lot and stand by everything I write on the Bitcointalk forum.

[nullius]

Ethereum as the most actively developed blockchain [...]

It’s not.  Bitcoin is; but you obviously are not a developer.  I follow Bitcoin Core development, and I am familiar with the codebases of some altcoins; I know first-hand whereof I speak.

I advise you to go for more learning and stop behaving as if you know it all, I know your type. I repeat, Ethereum is the most actively developed blockchain. I am not a coder like I had iterated, yet I research a lot and stand by everything I write on the Bitcointalk forum.

Well, besides the small fact that you evaded the major substance of my post to reply to the three sentences at the top, you have no idea what you are talking about.  You are obviously just regurgitating whatever swill you drank down on “crypto Twitter”, on Youtube, or on some shitcoin shill site.  That is “research”, to your type.

Given my familiarity with the development process, I feel like I am entering some bizarre alternate reality whenever I see altcoiners pretend that Bitcoin doesn’t have the most active development of any coin.  It is a meme on so-called “crypto Twitter” and amongst “Youtube influencers”.  No exaggeration:  I have seen proponents of an altcoin based on a codefork of Bitcoin Core v0.11.2 claim that Bitcoin is way behind.  (Bitcoin Core is on v23.0, soon v24; due to a renumbering, the v0.11.2 was equivalent to v11.2.)

How can this urban myth persist?  One reason is that Ethereum and its competitors have a “move fast and break things” kind of attitude, whereas Bitcoin Core deliberately has a cautious, conservative development process.  Their goal is not to chase fads, or to be first to ship glitzy features:  Bitcoin’s goal is to be absolutely the most secure, most reliable financial network.  Thus although Bitcoin Core development is so active that it’s difficult to keep up with it, most of the activity is beneath the surface where tweety-types and idiotic “influencers” never see it.

Since you are the type to learn best from videos, I suggest watching what Gloria Zhao says about security:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=te-2ke6g3lU

With that being said, I do need to give credit where due.  For all its many faults, Ethereum has been good at three things.  I may cover those in another post sometime.  It is not worthwhile here—especially not whereby the proper topic is that with its switch to POS, ETH is turning itself into an illegal unregistered security.

Now, lest my crypto-anarchist friends suppose that I have suddenly turned legalist, I should add what I recently remarked in another thread:

The funny thing is that decentralization matters.  And one of the only coins (arguably, the only coin) that is sufficiently decentralized to have some chance of resisting regulatory interference is—Bitcoin, the one coin that Mr. [Gensler] affirmatively said is not within his agency’s jurisdiction.  Amazing how that works.

I will illustrate with only one example of what I mean.  Beneath is marketing veneer of fake “decentralization”, the whole Ethereum ecosystem has a practical dependency on a single U.S.-based company:  ConsenSys, the owners of Infura and of the vertically integrated Metamask wallet.  If Infura were to go down, it would cause ecosystem-wide disruption in Ethereum that could not be caused in Bitcoin by eliminating any single party, or even any small group of parties.

You see, Mr. “EarnOnVictor”, you want to do something that is illegal in most jurisdictions:  Trade an unregistered security, i.e. a near-future POS version of ETH.  Whether or not it is wise or good, as a practical matter, Ethereum has no hope of getting away with it.

I do not have the foolish attitude of some Bitcoiners who believe that governments cannot shut Bitcoin down.  However, Bitcoin is incomparably more difficult to stop.  Regulators and politicians are not always so stupid as clueless Internet commentators presume; and I don’t doubt that some of the smarter ones take the cost of enforcement into consideration when they decide on their approach.  With Bitcoin, thus far, it seems they want to regulate with a relatively light touch.  I think that the cost of enforcement, combined with Bitcoin’s essential merit, constitute the major factors in the developing difference of regulators’ treatment of Bitcoin versus shitcoins.

I note that the Ethereum Foundation being in Swiss jurisdiction is meaningless, when the U.S. could throw the whole Ethereum ecosystem into turmoil simply by shutting down ConsenSys.  Whereas Bitcoin does not even have a centralized foundation, let alone any centralized critical infrastructure run by companies amenable to enforcement actions.  Bitcoin’s past experiment with a centralized foundation taught it lessons that Ethereum never learned; and it doesn’t really have any critical centralized infrastructure at all.

[EarnOnVictor]

and will lower transaction fee.

The latest information reaching me is that the merge will not have any reduction in fee, which is disheartening to me. But the other advantages are still welcome developments.

You might want to read this: https://ethereum.org/en/upgrades/merge/

[GreatArkansas]

and will lower transaction fee.

The latest information reaching me is that the merge will not have any reduction in fee, which is disheartening to me. But the other advantages are still welcome developments.

You might want to read this: https://ethereum.org/en/upgrades/merge/

Good that they have this article which is more likely a FAQs.
This will help some people who are having hopium about the good effects of The Merge to the network of Ethereum.
The Merge seems the first step before the Ethereum network will totally become cheap in transaction fees or fast transaction speeds, and based on the article which clearly says it's like transitioning from proof-of-work to the proof-of-stake mechanism.

[GelatikKembar]

all eyes are on Ethereum Merge, even though I think Ethereum Merge will have a bad impact on Ethereum,
especially when there is news that Ethereum Merge will not affect Ethereum Gas Fee,
of course we know and expect that Ethereum Merge can reduce Gas Fee to be cheap,
but I don't know ,we can only wait and prove it after ethereum merge.

[zasad@]

I note that the Ethereum Foundation being in Swiss jurisdiction is meaningless, when the U.S. could throw the whole Ethereum ecosystem into turmoil simply by shutting down ConsenSys.  Whereas Bitcoin does not even have a centralized foundation, let alone any centralized critical infrastructure run by companies amenable to enforcement actions.  Bitcoin’s past experiment with a centralized foundation taught it lessons that Ethereum never learned; and it doesn’t really have any critical centralized infrastructure at all.

The US authorities can destroy any cryptocurrency and the entire ecosystem, but there are also many people in the US who are lobbying for cryptocurrencies. I believe that bitcoin and ethereum are big ecosystem assets that have huge lobbies in the US, and these projects will not have regulatory issues as long as the big bosses need it.

___________
In Ethereum 2.0, the block time is 12 seconds, this will add 10% to TPS.

[virasisog]

and will lower transaction fee.

The latest information reaching me is that the merge will not have any reduction in fee, which is disheartening to me. But the other advantages are still welcome developments.

You might want to read this: https://ethereum.org/en/upgrades/merge/

Good that they have this article which is more likely a FAQs.
This will help some people who are having hopium about the good effects of The Merge to the network of Ethereum.
The Merge seems the first step before the Ethereum network will totally become cheap in transaction fees or fast transaction speeds, and based on the article it clearly says it's like transitioning from proof-of-work to the proof-of-stake mechanism.

I thought the update would focus on the reduction in the fee of the Ethereum network. I also had false hope about it but updates like this are still a good milestone for the betterment of the said coin. I guess it will take time for them to reduce the high fees of their network and they're taking step-by-step procedures to fix it. I just hope that this update would still have a good impact on the price of Ethereum.

[tygeade]

and will lower transaction fee.

The latest information reaching me is that the merge will not have any reduction in fee, which is disheartening to me. But the other advantages are still welcome developments.

You might want to read this: https://ethereum.org/en/upgrades/merge/

Good that they have this article which is more likely a FAQs.
This will help some people who are having hopium about the good effects of The Merge to the network of Ethereum.
The Merge seems the first step before the Ethereum network will totally become cheap in transaction fees or fast transaction speeds, and based on the article which clearly says it's like transitioning from proof-of-work to the proof-of-stake mechanism.

Honestly my hopium count increases as soon as I read that, and sometimes I go back and read it again. It’s clear that they have a defined roadmap in the works and they know what they are doing. People are mad that it took this long but having something as huge as ethereum and still doing this kind of big move is not easy, it takes time and they keep on testing everything a million times before they move on. It’s a wonder they are even capable of trying to do something like this.

It’s not easy and it definitely will make everyone a bit more scary to participate right away, but overtime we are going to see ETH become so huge that even BTC could be shaky at the top.

[minairia3]

and will lower transaction fee.

The latest information reaching me is that the merge will not have any reduction in fee, which is disheartening to me. But the other advantages are still welcome developments.

You might want to read this: https://ethereum.org/en/upgrades/merge/

Good that they have this article which is more likely a FAQs.
This will help some people who are having hopium about the good effects of The Merge to the network of Ethereum.
The Merge seems the first step before the Ethereum network will totally become cheap in transaction fees or fast transaction speeds, and based on the article it clearly says it's like transitioning from proof-of-work to the proof-of-stake mechanism.

I thought the update would focus on the reduction in the fee of the Ethereum network. I also had false hope about it but updates like this are still a good milestone for the betterment of the said coin. I guess it will take time for them to reduce the high fees of their network and they're taking step-by-step procedures to fix it. I just hope that this update would still have a good impact on the price of Ethereum.

It's true that I thought the same as you at first, but we will have to wait for the next updates before we can see a drop in the ETH gas fee. In the past few days, ETH's price has had very impressive rallies, at one point ETH went up to $2000k, all thanks to the merge event. But the market fell right after the news around Mt.Gox so things are falling again.

[sharilovav]

Merge is getting closer. Here is the merge countdown timer. Less than 20 days left before ETH 2.0

[EarnOnVictor]

Based on my past experience, I can say that after switching to PoS, the Ethereum price is likely to go into a correction, and perhaps the correction will begin as early as today. In the future, I expect a price increase in a few months if everything goes without errors and failures.

I closely monitored the situation with the Ethereum merge this month, but the price of Ethereum does not perform the way I expected. Although I had my reservation later this month since the way the market was behaving before the merge. It seems that it has been adequately priced-in between July-August, which was responsible for what we experienced after the merge. Ethereum rather sold off sharply than gain in price, I just hope that the transition from the proof of work to proof of stake would be worth it.