The Merge: The Top 5 Myths About the Upcoming Ethereum Upgrade

Dispel the mist surrounding The Merge, the most significant update in Ethereum's history. Here are five myths that stick out from the others.

Unintentionally, stories have spread throughout the community due to the enthusiasm around Ethereum's planned upgrade, The Merge, which entails the combination of two blockchains — mainnet Ethereum and Beacon Chain.

The Merge, dubbed the most critical upgrade in Ethereum's history, does signal the end of proof-of-work (PoW) for such Ethereum blockchain. However, the following five myths stand out from the others.

Myth 1: Following The Merge, Ethereum gas fees will decrease

One of the biggest myths among investors is that Ethereum's upcoming update will lower its infamous gas prices (transaction fees). While lower gas costs are the number one desire of all investors, The Merge is a consensus mechanism modification that will switch the Ethereum blockchain from proof-of-work to proof-of-stake (PoS).

Instead, Ethereum will need to work on increasing the network's throughput and capacity. To reduce transaction costs, the developer community is developing a rollup-centric roadmap.

Myth 2: Following The Merge, Ethereum transactions will move more quickly

We can presume that Ethereum transactions won't be significantly quicker. However, there is some truth to this claim, as Beacon Chain permits validators to publish a block every 12 seconds, or around 13.3 seconds, on the mainnet.

Although Ethereum experts predict that switching to PoS will enable a 10% increase in block generation, users won't notice the tiny difference.

Myth 3: The Merge will cause the Ethereum blockchain to go offline

Contrary to common belief, which predicts favorable effects for Ethereum from The Merge, a rumor has claimed that the scheduled upgrade will briefly bring down the Ethereum network.

As blocks go from being generated using PoW to being built using PoS, the developers don't expect any downtime.

Myth 4: Following The Merge, investors will have the ability to withdraw staked ETH

Currently locked on the Beacon Chain is Staked ETH (stETH), a cryptocurrency backed 1:1 by Ether (ETH). Users would like to be able to remove their stETH holdings; however, the developer community has stated that this modification is not made possible by the upgrade.

The Shanghai upgrade, the subsequent significant upgrade after The Merge, will enable the withdrawal of stETH holdings. Because of this, the assets won't be able to be used for at least 6 to 12 months after the merger.

Myth 5: Until the Shanghai upgrade, validators won't be able to withdraw their ETH awards

Validators will also have instant access to the fee rewards and maximal extractable value (MEV) generated during block proposals from the execution layer or Ethereum mainnet. At the same time, stETH remains restricted for investors until withdrawals are resumed after the Shangai upgrade.

The fee reimbursement will be available to the validator immediately because it won't be made up of newly issued tokens.

Polygon co-founder Mihailo Bjelic offered his assessment of Ethereum's unrealized potential, claiming that zkEVM Rollups, a new scaling technique for Ethereum, will enable the smart contract protocol to outperform Visa in terms of transaction throughput.

Bjelic's ideas were mirrored by Polygon's other co-founder, Sandeep Nailwal, who saw the solution reducing Ethereum fees by 90% and boosting transaction speed to 40–50 transactions per second.

Source: Cointelegraph News