The Ethereum Merge has officially taken place, marking the full transition of the network to proof-of-stake (PoS). 
On Sept. 15 at 06:44 UTC, the long-awaited Merge saw the merging of the Ethereum Mainnet execution layer and the Beacon Chain’s consensus layer at the Terminal Total Difficulty of 58750000000000000000000, meaning the network will no longer rely on a proof-of-work consensus mechanism.
The Ethereum Foundation said the Merge will make the Ethereum network about 99.95% more energy efficient and will set the stage for future scaling solutions, including sharding.
Speaking to Cointelegraph, StarkWare President and co-founder Eli Ben-Sasson that “the immediate importance of the Merge is the dramatic effect on energy consumption.”
Ben-Sasson said it also marks “the first step in a process that will lead to exceedingly widespread adoption of Ethereum,” stating:
“It starts a chain reaction of changes. The end result will be the very broad use of Ethereum’s computing power, and the general population using blockchain-based apps in many different areas of life.”
The Merge has come on the back of several years of hard work from the Ethereum Foundation.

.@VitalikButerin claims that #Ethereum will be able to to process “100,000 transactions per second”, following the completion of 5 key phases:

• The Merge
• The Surge
• The Verge
• The Purge
• The Splurge

A quick breakdown of what each stage means for $ETH. pic.twitter.com/FnaWww8mHZ

— Miles Deutscher (@milesdeutscher) July 22, 2022

With the Merge complete, the “Surge,” “Verge,” “Purge” and “Splurge” are the final stages left on the Ethereum technical roadmap.
The Surge will increase scalability for rollups through sharding, the Verge will achieve statelessness through Verkle trees, the Purge will eliminate historical data and technical debt, and the Splurge will involve a number of small miscellaneous upgrades.
Renowned designer Beeple celebrated the Merge with a sci-fi illustration:

THE MERGE pic.twitter.com/7tdfNZiuuv

— beeple (@beeple) September 15, 2022

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