What Is The Merge?
Also known as: Merge, Ethereum Merge, Ethereum Merge Upgrade
In short
The Merge is the September 2022 upgrade in which Ethereum abandoned Proof of Work (PoW) consensus and moved to Proof of Stake (PoS); the existing execution layer was merged with the Beacon Chain, which had been running separately since 2020, and mining ended.
Ethereum's transition to PoS was carried out in stages. First, in December 2020, a separate PoS chain called the Beacon Chain was launched and validators began working on this chain by staking ETH. With The Merge, the mainnet's transaction history and state were connected to this chain; blocks began to be produced no longer by miners but by validators who put up their staked ETH as collateral. Users' balances and smart contracts did not change in this process.
The most noticeable result of the transition was the drop in energy consumption; Ethereum's energy use is estimated to have decreased by more than 99 percent. Because the block rewards paid to miners were removed, new ETH issuance also fell significantly. Blocks began to be produced in fixed 12-second time slots.
Contrary to popular belief, The Merge did not reduce transaction fees and did not directly increase the network's capacity; scaling was addressed through Layer 2 solutions and later upgrades. Withdrawing staked ETH also became possible only with the Shapella upgrade in 2023. Some miners who opposed the transition launched separate chains that continued with PoW.
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