It’s been a year already the Merger took place, and as expected, the world’s second largest cryptocurrency, Ethereum, has undergone many changes since then. What are some? Let’s see.
One year later: how has Ethereum changed?
According to a prominent figure in the Ethereum community, Sassal, 980,000 ETH have been burned since Ethereum transitioned from a proof of work (PoW) consensus to proof-of-stake (PoS).
Prior to the merger, Ethereum had implemented a major upgrade known as the London hard fork. This introduced a fee burning mechanism where transaction base fees are burned immediately after a transaction is processed.
This move was aimed at making Ether deflationary as some tokens are permanently removed from circulation. Ethereum offering is decreased by 0.25% since the merger took place.
Furthermore, the merger resulted in the network being secured by validators who staked their ETH against miners, who under the PoW consensus formed the backbone of the network. In line with this, more than 11.6 million ETH has been deployed (since the merger) to secure the network and also earn passive income in return.
The top players include the staking platform Lido DAO, which has a market share of 22.64%, according to figures. facts from Dune Analytics. Other top players include exchanges such as Coinbase, Binance and Kraken.
Meanwhile, the number of validators on the network has increased significantly since the merger, with 362,000 new validators joining the network.
Decline in appreciation, but not in value
The price of Ethereum has risen by almost 11% from a year ago. However, many consider this insignificant for a token that reached an all-time high of $4,891 last year. Nevertheless, there are positives to be taken from the merger, as Ethereum has undoubtedly become more valuable since the merger took place, despite the current bear market woes.
A crypto analyst noted that ETH’s annual inflation rate has fallen since the merger, and trading activity on Ethereum’s layer 2 chains has also increased significantly. That would indicate that more people are being allowed into the Ethereum ecosystem.
According to him, Ethereum’s fundamentals are also at an all-time high as there are factors that show the ecosystem is stable and healthy. One of these is the fact that traditional financial institutions (TradFi) are showing interest in ETH.
Cathie Wood’s ARK Invest recently filed to offer an Ethereum Spot ETF (a first of its kind). This is done in conjunction with other institutions that have applied to offer an Ethereum futures ETF (of which ARK Invest happens to be one of them).
Featured image from WAYA Media