Ethereum's switch to Proof of Stake is nearly here
I really wanted to do an issue of "What is Decentralized Finance (DeFi)?" but I've had a crazy day and just don't have the mental capacity to do it. So today, I wanted to talk a little bit about the Ethereum upgrade that should be hitting this year. If you're not familiar, Ethereum was the first blockchain to have smart contract functionality and really helped shape the world of cryptocurrency as we know it.
It feels funny to talk about crypto like everyone already knows what it is, and we're very early still. I think less than 1% of the world's population is actively using crypto at this point, but don't quote me on that. I feel like that is pretty accurate but I have no idea honestly. Anyway - Ethereum is a proof of work blockchain in its current form.
The next major upgrade to the Ethereum blockchain which is going to switch the chain from proof of work to proof of stake is so close... So close we can even test it on the live proof of stake test networks. I played around with some transactions on the Kintsugi testnet when it was released, and it was quite an experience.
The switch from proof of work consensus to proof of stake consensus is going to do incredible things for the Ethereum blockchain.
Yesterday, Nethermind tweeted that the Sepolia beacon chain went live. Nethermind is one of the largest Ethereum developers there is, and this is a huge announcement coming from them. What this means is that developers are able to simulate the merge of the main Ethereum network which uses proof of work for consensus with the beacon chain.
There's already been many successful shadow forks of the post-merge chain so the next step is testing what happens when they disable proof of work. Switching the way the Ethereum blockchain verifies transactions without breaking it is surely no easy task, so the more testing that goes into this, the better.
Being able to simulate what will happen when the chains merge is crucial for making sure the real deal is able to be done smoothly. Devs obviously won't be able to simulate everything exactly as it is now, but they can get pretty close. When you're building the future of decentralized services, you can't really guess at these things.
This upgrade to the Ethereum blockchain is going to make it thousands of times more scalable and 99.9% more energy efficient. Remember all these people talking about how NFTs were killing the environment because they were on Ethereum? No more! Even though that's a hilariously stupid statement... lol
Hopefully it will keep gas fees lower and more consistent. Who knows what the upgrade is going to do to layer 2 solutions like Polygon when there's no more need for scaling solutions. Maybe there will still be a need for them, maybe there won't. They'll most likely live on and become more of their own platforms.
I'm not saying Polygon or Arbitrum are going to just die. I'm just thinking about life after the merge. It's definitely going to be a turning point in crypto. A crazy moment in history. Something our grandkids will talk about.
The merge has been talked about for a long time. This is the only time I feel like it's actually about to happen.
Post written by: @l337m45732 AKA NiftyPhill
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I think Eth and the Merge is one if the most interesting and make it or break it things happening in crypto this summer!
Without the merge, I think ETH and NFTs and even DEFI on Eth are really going to see a reduction of use during the bear season, but crypto always manages to hand out some surprises.
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Oh yeah, it got so expensive to use Ethereum that a lot of people don't touch it anymore.
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They pretty much become redundant overnight and I therefore expect to see a lot of value flow back into ETH.
From a technical point of view, what would the process of moving the entire PolyCub platform onto Ethereum look like?
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But what would I know haha.
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Yeah I think Polygon will continue for a while just because it's kind of the default alternative for Ethereum. These other chains though...
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Not a popular opinion, but it's how I feel. Theoretically speaking, moving PolyCUB to Ethereum would be fairly easy because it's all EVM based. I think the challenge would be the wrapped tokens.
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I have some eth in a MetaMask wallet and I'm assuming I won't need to do anything to carry over to the new chain, right?
Nope. It's going to be on the same blockchain.
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Cool, thanks!
Nice.
I look forward to the merge as an attention getter for cryptocurrency and hopefully defi.
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Yeah I think it might wake crypto back up.
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Yep, this week has been full of bad news, I hope for good news soon.
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Me too! Just found out I have COVID :D
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Oh my!
Sorry to hear that.
Get Well Soon
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It is something to look forward to when it happens.
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Definitely.
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I am not really sure what to make of the ETH merge because I don't really have any ETH. In my view, I know that fees are so high but I don't really know if switching to PoS will really change anything.
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Technically speaking, it will be faster, and gas fees will be more stable. ETH is also likely going to go deflationary. It doesn't necessarily mean lower fees, but Vitalik said he thinks chains with fees higher than 5 cents don't make sense... lol
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I think the L2 blockchains like Optimism will survive and thrive
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I don't know that these chains will go away but their use cases kinda go out the window.
Maybe not August, but I have a feeling it will come this year.
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