What was arguably the most anticipated event in the cryptocurrency space in recent years is now complete. The Ethereum proof-of-work mainnet has officially merged with the proof-of-stake Beacon Chain, marking the official transition of the entire protocol to PoS.

The merger is official

The Paris update, which is more commonly known as “the fusion”, just passed with a total terminal difficulty of 5875000000000000000000.

This marked the official transition of Ethereum from a proof-of-work consensus algorithm to one that is governed by proof of stake. It is also introducing entirely different tokenomics and token issuance dynamics to the protocol that are expected to have considerable long-term effects on the entire ecosystem.

The merger itself marks the consolidation of the consensus layer (formerly the Beacon Chain) and the execution layer (formerly the PoW chain).

Perhaps one of the most significant economic shocks for ETH holders is the fact that mining officially stops. This will reduce the issuance of new ETH to the market by 90%, essentially reducing the amount of money needed to substantially support current prices.

Although the merger is now complete, it is important to note that there is still a long way to go for Ethereum to fulfill their team’s vision.

Whats Next?

The promise of Ethereum’s transition to proof-of-stake is one that goes beyond reduced ETH emissions and is more focused on optimizing the network for higher transactional performance and scalability. This, however, will not happen instantly.

In fact, there are four planned phases that the network will go through now that the merger has finally occurred.

These include:

• the surge
• the edge
• the purge
• the waste

All of these have their isolated purposes, but when combined, they aim to increase the overall capabilities of the network and make it more scalable, secure, decentralized, and user-friendly.

Now that the Fusion is over, it’s important to remain as vigilant as ever. Are here five common scams related to Ethereum 2.0 that you should avoid and be aware of.