The major renovation of the major crypto platform Ethereum appears to have been successful. Founder Vitalik Buterin tweeted on Thursday that “a great moment for the Ethereum ecosystem” was completed. The software update should deliver energy savings of more than 99 percent, comparable to Finland’s energy consumption.
The transformation of Ethereum is called The Merge in the crypto world. The blockchain, the digital ledger that forms the heart of the platform, has now been merged with a differently organized blockchain that has been tested for two years. The Merge was tensely followed and celebrated online, including Merge parties from influencers on YouTube.
Read also these six questions and answers about The Merge
The merger was both a technical and an organizational challenge. Ethereum is organized in a decentralized way and thus has no leadership that can impose changes. The software update was only possible by reaching consensus among the many involved. They could have used this moment to split off. That doesn’t seem to have happened on a large scale.
Ethereum is the second most famous blockchain after bitcoin. The cryptocurrency ether is linked to it, as well as many applications for trading digital art. On paper, the ethers alone are worth about 200 billion euros.
The core of the current renovation is that all participating computers no longer verify all transactions in the ledger, but only a select group, who provides ether as collateral for this. As a result, much less computing power is required, and therefore much less energy.