Although Ethereum’s long-awaited merge upgrade is on the horizon, it is far from the final developmental milestone on the smart contract platform’s roadmap. Crypto analyst Miles Deutscher recently published a Twitter thread explaining that the network will have to go through five major phases before it is completed.
merge and surge
five developmental stages — as designated by Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin — are “The Merge,” “The Surge,” “The Verge,” “The Purge,” and, “The Splurge.”
The merge would involve “merging” Ethereum’s current blockchain (the execution layer) with the beacon chain (the consensus layer). In other words, it will convert Ethereum’s consensus mechanism from proof of work to proof of stake.
The move is expected to cut Ethereum’s electricity usage by 99%, while reducing the asset’s net issuance. In fact, many expect the issuance of ETH to turn out to be a net negative, hence the nickname “ultrasound money”.
The asset boomed this month when an ecosystem developer revealed that the merge upgrade could go live by September 19. Vitalik has stated that testing for the merge is now 90% complete and that Ethereum will be around 55% complete after its implementation.
Next comes “The Surge” – the phase that will bring sharding to the Ethereum blockchain. SHARING is a scaling solution that breaks up Ethereum into separate partitions or “shards” to spread out the computational load of the network. This upgrade is planned for 2023, and will complete Ethereum by roughly 80% based on Vitalik’s expectations in January.
The Verge, Purge, and Splurge
He is followed by “The Verge”, referring to the introduction of the “Workal Tree”. This upgrade includes a “powerful upgrade to Merkle Proof” that optimizes data storage for Ethereum nodes. This will also aid Ethereum scaling, as it allows for a greater number of blockchain transactions while keeping the blockchain decentralized.
There is a similar upgrade related to data storage for “The Purge” validators (aka Future ETH Stackers). This would reduce the hard drive space required for validators, including “historical data” and “bad debt,” streamlining storage and reducing network congestion.
The final upgrade will be “The Splurge” – a series of “miscellaneous” upgrades designed only to ensure that the network runs smoothly after tackling the first four steps.
In an interview with Peter McCormack in August of 2020, Vitalik commented on the different attitudes among bitcoiners and Etherians towards blockchain upgrades:
“The difference between bitcoin and ethereum is that bitcoiners consider bitcoin to be 80% complete, but ethereums consider ethereum to be 40% complete,” he said.
In a Twitter thread in May, Vitalik suggested that he was partly jealous of the “long-term stability” emphasized by bitcoin. However, he conceded that a lot of “active short-term changes” would be needed before Ethereum could reach that point.
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