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Cryptonews Ethereum News

Ethereum Merge Live: Latest News and Updates

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Acting editor-in-chief
Gary McFarlane
Acting editor-in-chief
Gary McFarlane
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Gary McFarlane is the acting editor-in-chief at Cryptonews.com

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The Ethereum Merge blockchain upgrade begins the transition to a Proof-of-Stake consensus system – it is a momentous occasion for crypto. 

The Merge describes the process whereby the test chain, known as the Beacon Chain, merges with the main chain – or to be more precise, replaces the mainnet.

Cryptonews is covering events today with live updates of progress.

To keep you in the loop, here’s the Ethereum Foundation’s Mainnet Merge viewing party. 

Latest news updates are shown below the video:

Sead Fadilpasic took down in realtime:

Merge at 6:43 UTC.
Participants in the call said that the first 13 minutes in particular would be crucial.
“Technically justified” the merge-transition block 6.5 minutes in.
Right away they started seeing transactions being included into the beacon chain, and ten minutes in they commented that they were impressed that there were zero missed slots, with only one missed slot around the 10th minute.
GPU miners on Ethereum are no longer active, they reminded.
Just before 7 UTC, the ethereum pos was finalized. 


Ethereum Merge live as it happens


16:43 UTC: We’re signing off on our live blog. Thanks you for joining us on this momentous day for Ethereum and crypto.

Everything is healthy for the first 8 hours of the Merge – 16:21 UTC

Flashbots relayer numbers for the first 8 hours: – 66k validators registered (15% of active validators) – 211 payloads delivered

By the way, did you get your Merge Apes yet?

https://www.twitter.com/kyaitaylor/status/1570441679043448832

‘Buy the rumor, sell the news’ is in full flow

…as predicted by Cryptonews.com’s Simon Chandler:

https://cryptonews.com/news/ethereum-merge-buyers-turn-into-sellers-as-trouble-free-upgrade-underwhelms.htm

ETH down to $1,512

… and early gainer ETHW has given up most of its advance, but still 3% higher:

Erik Voorhees, founder of Shapeshift, is inspired by the power of human ingenuity – 14:17 UTC 

Unfortunately the same cannot be said for the ETH price, which is down 1% today, at $1,585.


Ergo Price gets a helping hand from Merge – 13:22 UTC  

ERG is another GPU miner that is seeing hashrate and price going north. ERG price is up 14% to $4.91:

 

Woof woof – Tamadoge says congratulations too:

Lucky Block, the NFT competitions platform, says congrats to Vitalik:

Binance deposits and withdrawals are back up for ETH:

The last PoW block has been used to mint an NFT. Here’s the Opensea page for the NFT created by vanityblocks:

https://opensea.io/assets/ethereum/0x30f7bf69d92828441f5a6bfcf818df25deb2c4b4/17

Ethermine has shut down its servers:

A few days after the Merge, Ethermine will trigger an automatic payout to its miners for any unpaid balances. The company also launched an Ethereum staking pool in August, where Ether holders will be able to deposit their coins and earn yields.
Bloomberg

Bloomberg TV ‘Ethereum’s Merge’ Upgrade Is Complete’:

Charlie Karaboga, CEO and co-founder of Aussie fintech company Block Earner says:


“PoS will make Ethereum more scalable, secure and sustainable as there will be no more need for expensive to run  mining devices that also indirectly increase the CO2 emissions. Miners will be replaced with validators and users either can be validators themselves by staking ETH directly to a contract, or they’ll use staking platforms.

Ethereum’s move to PoS will catapult Ethereum into the heart of the future of finance, and it won’t be long before others follow suit. I am confident that the future of money will run on the internet, and Ethereum will be the settlement layer that everyone will accept and trust — especially when the spotlight is shining brighter than ever on the issue of sustainability in crypto mining.”

Dr. Martin Hiesboeck, head of blockchain and crypto research at Uphold comments:

“While the price action of Ethereum certainly gives hope for the overall market to maybe turn a corner in the next few weeks, the sudden jump is mostly motivated by hype and perhaps a lack of understanding of what The Merge will actually do. Users should be wary of scams around the time of The Merge, especially those asking you to move your ETH for security reasons or promising airdrops. 

We believe what happens to Ethereum doesn’t depend on The Merge but on what happens next. However, the fact that many big investors — from funds to private trusts —have mostly Ethereum on the radar and are even barred from investing in other chains may very well drive prices up further in the near term.”

Comment coming on need for regulatory intervention to deliver Merge sustainability benefits: 

Jennifer Clarke, Regulatory SME at CUBE (global regtech firm), argues that even if the merge is successful, the economic benefits and sustainability goals can only occur in tandem through shrewd regulatory oversite.

Our recent report found that while regulators have issued over 15,000 pieces of regulatory content around crypto, less than 0.1% of those discussed sustainability issues. Moreover, where sustainability issues have been raised – as we saw with MICA in the EU – they were quickly scrubbed from proposed rules.

The Ethereum Merge is a step in the right direction in harmonising sustainability goals and cryptocurrencies as the Proof of Stake model is far less energy intensive. However, regulation will play a vital role in creating sustained and significant change. In fact, to solve the conflict between cryptocurrencies and climate risk, global regulators will need to drive forward regulation to ensure that both can thrive without undermining the other.

ETHW airdrops coming through…

New #Ethereum airdrop tokens $ETHW are live already on Bybit.

What emoji for the surge?

Ethereum then and now:

A colorful panda:

Ethereum Classic hashrate hits 222 TH/s:

More comment is starting to come in, from Edouard Hindi at Tyr Capital and Seier Christensen, co-founder of Saxo Bank, as reported in the Financial Times (paywall):

“It is a complicated task,” said Edouard Hindi, chief investment officer at crypto hedge fund Tyr Capital. “One forgotten fine tune . . . could lead to a lot of volatility, and the market is in a panicky mood.”

“[The Merge] solves one issue but it does not solve a heck of a lot of other issues,” said Lars Seier Christensen, co-founder of Saxo Bank who now runs a blockchain project called Concordium.

In case you missed it, here’s some comments from Buterin during the viewing party, as reported by Bloomberg:

“This is the first step in Ethereum’s big journey toward being a very mature system,” Buterin said during an online Merge viewing party– essentially a public video call where developers tracked live progress on the switch. “And there’s steps left to go. We still have to scale, we have to fix privacy. To me the Merge symbolizes the difference between an early stage Ethereum and the Ethereum we’ve always wanted.”

ETHW to the moon… but will ETH catch a bid too?

We’ve been following the pump on the ETHW price today, but other traders are sticking with ETH:

The trade of the day?

ETHW/USD is up 47% on FTX, at 29.573. See the 5 min chart below:

Congrats from Dogecoin:

ETH PoS annual electricity consumption compared with the likes of YouTube, Netflix, bitcoin, gold mining and more…

Coinmarketcap has joined in the congratulatory spirit of things with a cute animation:

The first post-merge block proposer earned 45ETH – $72,360

Also congrats on the very first post-merge block proposer with a whooping 45eth! You are in the history book now!
 

Ethereum Price Prediction

Ok, so you want to know what all this means for the price of ETH? Checkout analyst Jacob Crypto Bury‘s video:
 

Here’s Why Ethereum Merge Could Create a Huge Centralization Problem

OKX has resumed withdrawals and trading of ETH and ERC20 tokens

FTX  first CEX off the mark with ETHWUSD pair

ETHW/USD started trading a few minutes ago on FTX: Currently priced at $22.7, 10% up on its listing price.

‘The Transition’ made crypto history

From Crypto Potato:

Someone paid a whopping 36 ETH to make history by minting the very first NFT on Ethereum after its transition to proof-of-stake.

Here’s the tx: https://etherscan.io/tx/0x5ad934ee3bf2f8938d8518a3b978e81f178eaa21824ee52fef83338f786e7b59

The ETHW mining pools list is getting longer. Here’s another four to add:

baikalmine https://baikalmine.com/

xnpool https://www.xnpool.com/

woolypooly https://woolypooly.com/

solomine https://solomine.org/

Cryptonews.com on Twitter

By the way, here’s our Twitter feed for keeping in the loop with all things crypto today and every day: 

First MEV-Boost block – an important technical milestone

How does MEV-Boost work? PoS node operators must run three pieces of software: a validator client, consensus client, and an execution client. MEV-boost is a sidecar for the Consensus Client, a separate piece of open source software, which queries and outsources block-building to a network of builders.

Minor issue reported…


What is described as a minor hitch has been reported in the Merge upgrade, which seems to get fixed with a restart of the Besu client. 

Besu is a Java-based Ethereum client that implements the Enterprise Ethereum Alliance (EEA) specification and can be run on the public network or on private networks, as well as on a number of testnets.

Lead Blockchain Protocol Engineer at ConsenSys Adrian Sutton says:

There is a minor issue with some besu nodes, see next tweet.

Ravencoin price up too – but only in line with overall market

Ravencoin is up 80% in the past 7 days as it sees miners move on to its network from Ethereum. RVN price is currently consolidating after news of the successful Merge.

Ethereum Classic price gave up some gains when Merge kicked in but still up 3%

Ethereum Classic gave up some gain when the Merge completed without a hhitch, but it i still 3.4% up in the past 24 hours.

ETH deflation in an inflationary world


Thanks to UltraSoundMoney for its realtime tracking of the deflationary impact of the Merge:

It’s a green day… for the environment


A great day for the environment, as Vitalik intimates here with a tweet in which he tags Ethereum researcher Justin Drake. 

The Merge will reduce worldwide energy consumption by 0.2%. That kind of makes bitcoin feel like the baddie. Before the maxies pile on, but it makes bitcoin the most secure blockchain in the world.

Our crypto price tracker shows ETH up around 2% across a selection of exchanges, with the highest quote $1,628 at Kraken:

 


List of mining pool we know about on EthereumPoW fork

Pool Name — —Pool Website

f2pool https://www.f2pool.com/

poolin https://www.poolin.com/

2miners https://2miners.com/

btc.com https://pool.btc.com/

nanopool https://nanopool.org/

ethwmine https://ethwmine.com/

antpool https://www.antpool.com/

lhpool https://www.lhpool.com/

bitdog https://www.ethwpool.one/

jniupool https://jniupool.com/

molepool https://molepool.com/

crazypool https://crazypool.org/

pool-moscow https://pool-moscow.ru/

k1pool https://k1pool.com/

e4pool https://e4pool.com/

lovetheminers https://lovetheminers.com/

ua pool https://ua-mining.com/

extremehash https://extremehash.net/

x-pool https://www.x-pool.io/


EthereumPoW is getting traction

EthereumPoW is building hashrate as mining pools move over in what look like a very healthy stream:

…and big fish 2Pool, Poolin, and BTC.com are also onboard

Binance sends its congrats…

Binance is happy about the Merge. Why wouldn’t it be. Binance is going to be a huge player in the new economics of Ethereum. Basically, ETH is going to look a lot more like an interest bearing instrument. To the validators the riches?
 

We are posting this tweet because we like the image:

Ethereum PoS is very stable…

Co-founder of Gnosis Martin Köppelmann (@koeppelmann) on the incredible stability of block production post Merge:

The block times of the last 100 blocks! Amazing stability after the merge! Only 1 missed block. This is really the best case scenario!

A highly successful day for Ethereum and crypto, but that also means the scammer are out. The Logical Indian has had their twitter account hacked, so if you see an enticing tweet about a 50,000 ETH giveaway – yeah it sounds too good to be true. That’s right, it’s a SCAM!!!

From Aya Miyaguchi (ayamiya.eth) at the foundation (not the Asimov one)


You will recall Google joined in the fun a few days ago when the search engine started its very own countdown for the Ethereum Merge. So thank you Google for keeping us all in the know:

https://www.google.com/search?q=ethereum+merge

From Watcher Guru

The Ethereum Network has finally transitioned to proof-of-stake on Thursday, September 15, 2022, marking the end of the now-obsolete proof-of-work mining infrastructure. The transition ushers a new era in the crypto sphere that is environmentally friendly, with the Blockchain consuming 99.95% less energy than it previously did.

The development silences critics who pointed out that blockchain technology is a danger to the environment. Previously, Ethereum’s proof-of-work protocol consumed high energy that could have powered Finland for a year, an estimate reports. However, things have now changed for the better, as the Merge will hereon reduce Ethereum’s carbon footprint drastically.

And from the man himself, Vitalik Buterin:

And we finalized! 

Happy merge all. This is a big moment for the Ethereum ecosystem. Everyone who helped make the merge happen should feel very proud today.

The Merge has just finalized:

 

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