Ethereum activates its long-awaited Merge upgrade, in development since 2020, and transactions are now being processed under proof of stake
First off, thank you for reading and as always, nothing you read or hear of my content is ever financial advice. Ryan Whitwam / ExtremeTech : Ethereum Switches to Proof-of-Stake, Will Reduce Global Energy Consumption Brayden Lindrea / Cointelegraph : Dogecoin becomes second largest PoW cryptocurrency Daniel McCormick / Not Boring by Packy McCormick : Weekly Dose of Optimism #12 The Weekly Update : The Friday Focus: Issue 51 Tweets: @vitalikbuterin : 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. @koeppelmann : The block times of the last 100 blocks! Amazing stability after the merge! Only 1 missed block. This is really the best case scenario! https://twitter.com/... @vitalikbuterin : “The merge will reduce worldwide electricity consumption by 0.2%” - @drakefjustin @cirrusnft : Someone just paid 36 ETH in gas to mint this The first minted NFT on proof of stake https://twitter.com/... @beeple : THE MERGE https://twitter.com/... @vanityblocks : You make the commitment and nature will respond to that commitment by removing impossible obstacles. Dream the impossible dream and the world will not grind you under, it will lift you up. This is the trick. https://opensea.io/... @cz_binance : Merge successful. POS activated. We are all still here. @ercwl : ETH PoW is trading at $27 (1.7%). The daily rewards are 13100 ETH, $354k instead of $20m. There is no way miners can just “keep mining” the ETHPoW chain, no matter how you adjust the difficulty. There simply aren't enough rewards in the system to pay for the electricity bills. @vitalikbuterin : One important corollary of this is better EIP 1559 performance (because fewer blocks bump up against the 2x limit). So far, the percentage of full blocks has dropped from ~20% to ~10%. https://etherscan.io/... https://twitter.com/... @krls : Congratulations to the entire Ethereum community! 👏 The merge is a vast, complex technical & operational accomplishment that will reduce Ethereum energy consumption by ~99%. @VitalikButerin https://twitter.com/... Gabe Rivera / @gaberivera : https://twitter.com/... https://twitter.com/... @digieconomist : BREAKING: Ethereum has just ended its environmentally harmful PoW mining. The network's electric power demand is likely reduced by 99.98%, which comes down to possibly as much as a country like Austria requires. CO2 savings may equal global CO2 reductions by EVs. When Bitcoin? https://twitter.com/... @0xfoobar : Hadn't thought much about how variable blocktimes contributed to variable blocksizes, but a lovely complement to EIP-1559 Reducing blocktime variance to near-0 (in addition to 10% average blocktime decrease) should have a notable improvement on end-user speed perception https://twitter.com/... @petermccormack : I can't help but feel that the Ethereum Merge is their S2X moment. Where #bitcoin defended against a push for centralisation, Ethereum has failed. The consequences will likely be felt some time down the road. (See below for patronising Udi comment). @el33th4xor : A moment and milestone to remember. Congratulations to the builders who navigated enormous technical complexity. You should be incredibly proud. https://twitter.com/... Brad Garlinghouse / @bgarlinghouse : Truly an incredible technological feat - congrats Ethereum community on the merge! @hasufl : simply speaking, a bet on Bitcoin today is still a bet on a great asset+network as is. and maybe that's enough for a bright future, maybe not. but it's no longer a bet on human creativity, entrepreneurialism, and problem-solving. and that's what's making me really sad Michael Saylor⚡️ / @saylor : There is no alternative to #Bitcoin. Dan McArdle / @robustus : Eth folks already RTing one of the most aggressive and misleading esg trolls isn't great https://twitter.com/... @hasufl : the merge has only convinced me further that the intellectual state of the btc community is truly in shambles. the high-quality people who remain (e.g. bitmex research) are mostly covering ethereum now. I still love Bitcoin very much and hope for a restorative movement. Arthur Hayes / @cryptohayes : Be not dismayed, Lord Satoshi is the one true god. #Bitcoin doesn't need to do anything just exist. That is all, and in time all sinners will repent. https://twitter.com/... Jameson Lopp / @lopp : Practically nobody outside of a nerdy niche of technical crypto folks actually cares about what consensus mechanisms secure a given network. A decade of history and experimentation has shown as much. All that matters in the long term is the game theory; the game is afoot! Dan McArdle / @robustus : 9/ Additionally, I think the narrative on PoW will change over time. The ESG-based attacks are ludicrous on many levels, and enough people (& politicians) will see that eventually, and the remaining haters will matter even less. @hosseeb : Morning after the merge... What now guys? Balaji Srinivasan / @balajis : This is a huge day for @VitalikButerin and @zoink. It's also a huge day for proving the point that at least some people can succeed without college. How many people? Even if it's just the very best, that shows there's a level above college. But maybe it's everyone. https://twitter.com/... @trustlessstate : The “Ethereum never ships” narrative is ☠ @kaiynne : I've said this before so many times, you need to have conviction and patience to survive early stage projects. Today is in many ways day one for a new Ethereum network. It's going to take a while before the world realises how incredible that is. Ryan Sξan Adams / @ryansadams : If the merge doesn't make you bullish ETH nothing will @trustlessstate : The only way Bitcoin ‘accelerates the world to renewable energy’ is by 1. Placing huge demand on renewable energy 2. Then sending its own demand to 0, so the rest of the world can access the newly abundant supply Kind of like what #Ethereum just did Matt Huang / @matthuang : Ethereum Merged! Beyond the apropos excitement for Ethereum and its future (withdrawals! 4844! etc)... A massive technical achievement by an open & decentralized community over 8+ years. Incredibly bullish on crypto communities as *new institutions* that can build Great Things. @preston_vanloon : The first block on PoS had a block reward of 45 Ether! https://etherscan.io/... https://beaconcha.in/... https://twitter.com/... Frank Chaparro / @fintechfrank : Merging right into the foodstamps line https://twitter.com/... Steven Dennis / @steventdennis : Old Ethereum consumed ~112 Terawatt Hours of electricity a year — more than an entire typical U.S. state or assorted small countries. New Ethereum estimated at 0.01 Terawatt Hours. Bitcoin estimated at 200 TWh/year https://ethereum.org/... https://twitter.com/... Jameson Lopp / @lopp : GPU hashpower doesn't simply turn off and die, it moves on to feed from a different demand source. https://t.co/epiDrOqsOi @alex : so the eth merge wound up having basically no price impact? that was the one possibility i didn't see folks talking about
Context & Ripple Effects
Ethereum moved toward this change through a Ropsten testnet deployment and then a tentative September 15 target set by its core developers. Related coverage framed the transition chiefly as a consensus redesign with a projected reduction of more than 99% in energy use.
The activation turns that long-running preparation into a production-network change: Ethereum no longer relies on proof-of-work mining for its main chain. That makes the Merge a concrete test of whether a major crypto network can change its operating model without abandoning its transaction base.
First-order effects
- Ethereum transactions are now validated under proof of stake, while Ethereum proof-of-work miners lose the main chain as a source of mining activity.
- Ethereum's electricity demand falls materially because proof-of-work mining is no longer required for the main chain.
Second-order effects
- Ethereum's energy profile gives ESG-focused scrutiny of the network a different factual baseline, shifting attention from mining consumption to proof-of-stake operation and its risks.
- Former Ethereum proof-of-work miners must redirect hardware and power capacity to other uses or other proof-of-work networks, increasing competitive pressure on those remaining outlets.
Third-order effects
- If Ethereum's production transition holds, it establishes that an established blockchain can replace its consensus mechanism through a multi-year testing and upgrade process rather than treating energy-intensive mining as permanent infrastructure.
- The shift strengthens a broader separation between transaction networks' security models and the physical power demand once tied to mining, making energy use a design choice rather than a fixed property of a major chain.
The trend: Major blockchain networks are treating consensus design as an operating-model decision, with power use and mining dependence becoming central trade-offs.