The most significant commercial highway of crypto, Ethereum, got repaved. Vitalik Buterin, co-founder of Ethereum took Twitter to announce the completion of the software upgrade.

After long years of hard work, discussions, and experimentation, the popular cryptocurrency platform Ethereum completed its long-awaited energy-saving upgrade, known as the Merge, replacing the power-hungry systems with a more efficient and environmentally sustainable setup. This framework utilizes the piles of the network’s native token, Ether, that are further placed in staking wallets resulting in a drastic reduction in energy consumption by 99%.

Ethereum is home to about more than 3,500 active decentralized apps, ranging from games to exchange and handling the crypto worth $50 billion. The Merge is a stepping stone to more upgrades that may potentially change the blockchain space by making the network cheaper and faster and improving its usage and stature.

According to Buterin, “Merge indicates the difference between the early stage Ethereum and Ethereum they are looking for.” He further added, “the upgrade of the software is the first step towards Ethereum’s long journey of being a mature blockchain system, and there are many more steps left like fixing of scale and privacy.”

The celebration of the completion of the upgrade erupted in the livestream where developers and researchers who worked hard for the completion were gathered to mark the milestone. The livestream was viewed by more than 41,000 people further, featured technical explanations about Merge.

Further, properties of the Ether witnessed the change post Merge, making it more akin to yield-bearing securities. According to tracker Staking Reward, post-merge, Ether is expected to generate a return of approximately 5.2%. Coupled with the expected reduction in the supply of Ether Token by the Coin base as a precautionary measure post update, may make the coin attractive to the investors.

In a part on optimism over Merge, Ether has outperformed Bitcoin by a wide margin and was up as much as 3% following the merge to $1,654. Since both cryptocurrencies have been struggling, with Ether being slipped more than 50% this year.

Source: Bloomberg

Even though the upgrade has been completed, based on past Ethereum upgrades experience, it is plausible that the Merge can be followed by days and weeks of hiccups. Therefore, worried about hacks and bugs, crypto exchanges like Coinbase Global Inc. as a precautionary measure ceased the deposits and withdrawals during the merge. Further, Aave, a Crypto lender, has suspended the borrowing of Ether before Merge.