If you follow the world of cryptocurrency, you’ve probably heard rumblings over the past weeks about “The Merge,” something big coming to Ethereum. Developers have already started to get ready for the change, expected to start in mid-September.
A local tech expert said that if the operation goes off smoothly, most people won’t know that anything changed.
But what if The Merge crashes the entire network? Here’s a look at the upcoming changes.
What is Ethereum?:
First, a little background on the cryptocurrency in question, Ethereum. It’s the second-largest token currently available on the market, behind Bitcoin.
Ethereum is often compared to Bitcoin, but the two projects were made for different purposes.
Bitcoin is a peer-to-peer sharing network that allows users to move currency without the need for a central authority or bank. Ethereum, on the other hand, was designed as a programmable blockchain that allows users to create and develop decentralized apps, or dApps. Ether, or ETH, is the currency developed to pay for things on the Ethereum network.
The Ethereum blockchain hosts many other digital currencies, and is the blockchain behind the recent NFT craze.
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As thousands of people move money, create and play online games and build their businesses, million of computers are buzzing away in almost every part of the globe powering the Ethereum blockchain. It’s the power that all of these computers are drinking up that gives many people pause when considering getting involved with cryptocurrencies.
However, with the upcoming merge only a few weeks away, the greedy need for CPUs could become a thing of the past.
What changes with The Merge?:
There are thousands of different kinds of cryptocurrency. For the most part, crypto falls into two categories: coins and tokens. Bitcoin, Dogecoin, Tether, Cardano and others are coins and for the most part, can be used in the same ways as traditional currency.
Tokens, on the other hand, are assets that live on a blockchain. While coins are created to live on their own blockchain, tokens are made to be used on an already existing platform. An NFT would be an example of a token. The NFT is made by an artist, lives on the Ethereum blockchain, and can be sold or traded on that same blockchain.
Ethereum, as a blockchain, currently uses a process called “proof-of-work” to verify crypto transactions. Since there isn’t a bank, government or larger authority overseeing the thousands of transactions that happen every minute, users called “miners” group transactions happening around the same time into groups of data called “blocks.” Miners can then look at these blocks, or groups of transactions, and verify them all together at once. This process is essentially “building the blockchain.”
So even though transaction requests happen dozens of times per second, this organizational system means that transactions are verified, histories are preserved and everyone using the Ethereum network knows that the information they see is up-to-date and accurate.
But this verification system takes a lot of computing power, and a lot of energy. This one of the main criticisms lodged against crypto.
However, the …….