Ethereum Merge done and dusted- assessing its ins, outs, and unseen
The much anticipated Ethereum [ETH] Merge has finally happened and has been announced successful. The transition to Proof-of-Stake (PoS) of the second most significant blockchain will now make ETH more energy efficient after years of delay.
While the Merge occurred a few hours ago today (15 September), many milestones have been hit across different levels. Finally, ETH has achieved its mission to reduce its energy consumption by 99.95%.
The most notable part was how the first ETH block occurred at exactly 6:42 am UTC. According to the reports, the first block was mined at a block height of 155373394 and only took seventeen seconds.
As for its size, the first PoS ETH block was 18,559 bytes at a mining difficulty of 58,750,003,716,588,352,816,469.
Source: GranitaAcademy
Interestingly, the Merge also created the first PoS block reward on the ETH chain. According to the Etherscan receipt, the first block reward was a remarkable 45.03 ETH.
While assessing the Beacon Chain report, it showed that 12,983 validators contributed to the first block mining and reward.
Source: Etherscan
As the Merge was happening, over 30,000 people in the crypto community tuned into an “Ethereum Mainnet Merge Viewing Party” hosted by the Ethereum Foundation on YouTube. The live event had in attendance crypto big wigs, including Ethereum founder Vitalik Buterin.
Interestingly, the Ethereum head responded to some questions raised by a few attendees. When asked what Ethereum plans were post-Merge, Vitalik said that the ETH surge, verge, purge, and splurge were already in the works.
According to him, these events were happening at parallel times. He also noted that they formed part of the sharding process expected to provide scaling solutions for Ethereum.
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