Ethereum’s Merge upgrade has been successfully completed

The consensus and execution layers have been merged and Ethereum is now a full Proof of Stake network.

Ethereum has smoothly completed its historic Merge with the successful joining of the Mainnet and Beacon Chain.

“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,” Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin said in a tweet, congratulating the community and everyone involved with the Ethereum Merge.

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.

— vitalik.eth (@VitalikButerin) September 15, 2022

The long-awaited transition to Proof-of-Stake (PoS) Merge was triggered at block 15537393 by Terminal Total Difficulty (TTD) of 58750000000000000000000 on September 15 at 06:42:42. Then, the network abandoned the previous Proof-of-Work consensus system and the Ethereum mainnet Execution Layer merged with the Beacon Chain Consensus Layer. Less than an hour after the Merge, a user spent 36 ETH (roughly $60,000) to mint the first NFT on the proof-of-stake (PoS) network.

According to Ethernodes, almost 89% of clients on the Ethereum network have successfully upgraded for the PoS transition, with 88% Go-Ethereum (geth), 93% Erigon, 100% Besu, and 92% Nethermind execution layer clients’ nodes ready. Developers reported that nearly 95% of nodes and validators have participated in the Merge, with 4-5% remaining offline nodes and validators possibly going to upgrade soon.

The conclusion of the most significant upgrade in the history of the cryptocurrency industry marks a reduction of energy consumption by ~99.95% and a 90% cut in ETH issuance due to the EIP-1559 burning mechanism.

Ethereum developers will now focus on the next stages of the upgrades – The Surge, The Verge, The Purge, and The Splurge – as well as improving scalability, efficiency, speed, and security of the ecosystem.

According to data by TradingView, after the merge (around 7:20 a.m. UTC on September 15) ETH-USD had surged to $1,652. At the time of writing, ETH-USD is trading around $1.603,93 USD with a 24-hour trading volume of $24.831.402.989 USD.