As the penultimate shadow fork test before the Ethereum Merge went live, the final countdown began for the overhaul which was also incorporated by the Google team in its recent update.
Sam Padilla, a blockchain developer for Google Cloud, demonstrated the most recent Google Search update on this Twitter handle, which features a real-time Ethereum Merge countdown with merging pandas. Calling it a “little surprise” for the “Ethereum folks,” Padilla stated, “Everyone is so excited for what is coming and appreciative of the work that has been going into this for years.”
At the time of press, the Ethereum Merge is around 2 days and 22 hours away based on its hashrate of 859 TH/s and current difficulty levels.
The thirteenth shadow fork, which copies the current state information of the Ethereum mainnet, went live on Sept. 9.
Ethereum developer Tim Beiko stated in its last Merge update that Kiln, an Ethereum Merge testnet propelled in early 2022, will be closed down during the week of September 12, 2022. With that, testnets Ropsten and Rinkeby are also scheduled to be drawn out in Q4 2022 and Q3 2023 respectively, the developer stated.
Market downturn precedes the Ethereum Merge PoS switchover
Ethereum’s transition from proof of work to proof of stake is expected to take place between Sept. 13 and 15 as per co-founder Vitalik Buterin.
However, many are concerned that the proof-of-stake shift won’t be sufficient to exert deflationary pressure on Ethereum at the present price levels. Especially when Bitcoin fell back below the $20,000 levels, once again fueling the ‘crypto is dead’ narrative recently. With crypto called “dead” over 20 times in 2022 and a total of 461 times since its incorporation by the media, according to data from 99Bitcoins, a major section remains optimistic around the event.
With regard to the Merge, Thomas Dunleavy, a senior research analyst with Messari told Yahoo Finance, “A lot of people think this thing will be dead on arrival, which I don’t completely agree with, but I think it’s going to immediately face a lot of selling pressure.”
On-chain metrics and price action
Be[In]Crypto recently reported that the number of ETH wallets holding more than 1,000 ETH jumped to a 15-month high as the Merge draws near.
Data by IntoTheBlock revealed that the indicators showing that 58% of the holders are making money at the current price levels and 40% of all holdings for Ethereum are held by whales are bullish parameters for the token. However, at the time of writing, net network growth and large transaction signals remain bearish.
In terms of price, Ethereum is maintaining a 24-hour range of $1,720 and $1,784 on CoinGecko. While the second-generation coin has gained over 20% in the last two weeks, there are minor losses in the past day.
Ethereum, however, continues to rule the roost in decentralized finance despite facing competition from so-called ‘Ethereum Killers’ like Solana, Cardano, and Polkadot. At press time, DeFiLlama calculates the total value locked (TVL) on the Ethereum network to be close to $34.96 billion. Ethereum now dominates 58.7% of the DeFi market with 553 protocols launched on the network so far.
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