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"At the Ethereum Community Conference in Paris, the Ethereum blockchain's co-founder, Vitalik Buterin, shared what he expects for Ethereum in a post-Merge era. Buterin closed the conference by sharing that after the Merge, Ethereum will only be about 55% complete. The Merge refers to when the current proof-of-work (PoW) Ethereum mainnet protocol will "merge" with the Beacon Chain proof-of-stake (PoS) blockchain system and continue as PoS. So where does that leave Ethereum in a post-Merge world? Many have looked at the Merge as the grand finale for the network. But now, according to Buterin, Ethereum will be tackling "the Surge, the Verge, the Purge and the Splurge.""

Ethereum (ETH) broke past $1152 hours early in the morning (ET) of January 4. Reasons for the recent spike could be its growing utility within decentralized finance, support for NFTs and upgrades to the Ethereum network with the successful implementation of EIP 1559 into the ETH 2.0 upgrade on Beacon Chain. The Ethereum Improvement Proposal (EIP) 1559 does two main things-it establishes the market rate for block inclusion and effectively burns the majority of the ETH in the transaction fee. This change to Ethereum's gas management has significant implications to the monetary system and policy of Ethereum EIP 1559. Burning the bulk of the ETH in transaction fees provide a deflationary mechanism to Ether's supply, which adds to the scarcity of Ether and long-term security of Ethereum.

Bitcoin can be wrapped onto the ethereum blockchain using a number of ethereum-based tokens, such as WBTC, which has surged in popularity since May, according to data from Dune Analytics. During some periods in August, more bitcoin was wrapped onto ethereum than was created by bitcoin miners. Bitcoin wrapped onto the ethereum blockchain using WBTC is backed 1:1 by bitcoin and minted by locking up bitcoin on the bitcoin blockchain. It's thought that by wrapping bitcoin onto ethereum and making it compatible with smart contracts, users will be able to unlock tools such as lending, liquidity provision, and decentralized exchanges.

Ethereum transaction fees, which have been growing larger, are back down to 2020 levels. However, that's because demand for Ethereum and Ethereum-based DeFi protocols has fallen, along with prices, as partly evidenced by a 28% drop in Uniswap trades from a mid-May peak. Ethereum transfer volume, as measured in dollars, has declined by 60% in two weeks, according to a recent report by Glassnode Insights."

Ethereum 2.0 or ETH2 or Serenity is the evolution of Ethereum network into the next phase for the performance improvement of Ethereum. The main aspect in this upgrade is the shift of Ethereum's consensus algorithm from Proof of Work (PoW) to Proof of Stake ( PoS). This will result in the improvement of security, usability and scalability of the ethereum network as a whole. The upgrade will be live in multiple phases, starting with Phase 0 in this year of 2020.

Tether announced today the launch of USDT stablecoin transfers on the OMG Network, one of the first viable Ethereum Layer 2 scaling solutions. The launch will bring increased speeds and reduce transaction costs for Tether transfers, currently the number one source of transactions on the Ethereum network. If meaningful volume from Tether transfers shifts to the OMG network, it could generate a much needed reduction in the fees paid to interact with the Ethereum blockchain. The launch of OMG Network was a big step toward a more scalable Ethereum but its effects may not be felt just yet.

There's 131,455 Bitcoin on Ethereum, or $1.497 billion, as of October 11, equivalent to 3.6% of Ethereum's market cap. These are Bitcoin that's been converted into Ethereum-based tokens that represent Bitcoin. The most popular is Wrapped Bitcoin, or wBTC, which holds 73% of the market share. Next up is renBTC, with 20% of the market share. People are moving lots of Bitcoin to Ethereum to make the most of this summer's decentralized finance boom. Such products as decentralized lending protocols, non-custodial exchanges and synthetic derivatives-like wBTC-were all the rage this summer. But you have to use Ethereum-based tokens to use them.

A majority of decentralized finance (DeFi) apps have been built on Ethereum, and DeFi's explosion has rippled across the network. DeFi has pushed Ethereum to its limits but is also accelerating the pace of innovation and experimentation. In this piece we look at how four DeFi token launches affected Ethereum and how the network is evolving as a result. We conclude that DeFi will undoubtedly continue to push Ethereum's limits, as new dapps and tokens launch. But Ethereum is changing as well, and Layer 2 scalability could open up new doors for what is possible in DeFi and beyond.

CLabs, the organization responsible for developing the Celo blockchain, is seeking to return to the Ethereum ecosystem by transitioning from an independent EVM-compatible layer-1 blockchain to an Ethereum layer-2 solution. It could potentially enable more liquidity to flow between Celo and other chains but also generate extra costs for sequencers, such as fees on the data availability layer and gas on Ethereum. In addition, it is also unclear whether sequencers' rewards would match with current validators' rewards. https://forum.celo.org/t/clabs-proposal-for-celo-to-transition-to-an-ethereum-l2/6109

"Prior to The Merge, Ethereum used to have dozens upon dozens of mining pools dedicating hashrate toward the blockchain network. That has all changed and most of the miners transitioned or plan on transitioning to other Ethash compatible coins like ethereum classic, ERGO, and the new fork ETHW. Now Ethereum blocks are verified by validators and at the time of writing, there are 429,278 validators. However, a great deal of the 13.7 million staked ethereum is held by four known providers."

"The Ethereum "Shapella" upgrade, scheduled to take place April 12, 2023 at 22:27 UTC, is expected to bring a single important change to the Ethereum ecosystem: introducing the ability of validators to withdraw their stake, which was heretofore locked in the Beacon Chain. The Shapella upgrade includes both the Shanghai upgrade on the Ethereum execution layer (EL) and the simultaneous Capella upgrade on the consensus layer (CL), or Beacon Chain. The Shapella upgrade is an important step forward for Ethereum, and it has been eagerly anticipated by Ethereum developers, institutional investors, and commentators alike. We'll take a closer look at the key features and expected outcomes of the upgrade. "

The smart contract required for triggering the first phase of Ethereum 2.0 has enough funds to begin activation of Ethereum's most ambitious upgrade yet, which will radically shift Ethereum's economic model, resource usage and governance. To be clear, the network itself isn't launching just yet. The launch of Ethereum 2.0 will activate a parallel proof-of-stake blockchain dubbed "the beacon chain" to run in parallel alongside the existing Ethereum network. The initial phases of its development will not impact existing users and decentralized applications on Ethereum.

The Ethereum network currently has a proof-of-work (PoW) consensus mechanism and in time, the protocol plans to fully transition into a proof-of-stake (PoS) network. The authors of this paper believe there are three attack vectors on a PoS Ethereum blockchain, by combining techniques from two recently presented attacks on PoS Ethereum: one where short-range reorganizations of the underlying consensus chain are used to increase individual validators' profits and delay consensus decisions, and one where adversarial network delay is leveraged to stall consensus decisions indefinitely. The proposed third attack vector considerably relaxing the requirements on adversarial stake and network timing, and thus rendering the attacks more severe. It allows an adversary with vanishingly small fraction of stake and no control over network message propagation to cause even long-range consensus chain reorganizations. Honest-but-rational or ideologically motivated validators could use this attack to increase their profits or stall the protocol, threatening incentive alignment and security of PoS Ethereum. The attack can also lead to destabilization of consensus from congestion in vote processing.

Ethereum is scheduled to merge to Proof of Stake (PoS)1 on September 15, 2022, and as expected, this has caused speculation around the emergence of a Proof of Work (POW)2 Ethereum (ETHW) fork. While there is precedent for an Ethereum fork3, this note from Grayscale explores why it may not be viable this time around and what it could mean for both Ethereal (ETH) and Ethereum Classic (ETC).

The Enforcement Division of the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has notified Consensys that it is closing its investigation into Ethereum (ETH) 2.0, and will not pursue an enforcement action against the technology incubator that develops decentralized software services and applications that operate on the Ethereum blockchain. The SEC was investigating whether ETH had become a "security" after it switched from a proof-of-work (PoW) to proof-of-stake (PoS) protocol (from "ETH 1.0" to "ETH 2.0"). In April 2024, Consensys had filed a lawsuit against the SEC, alleging that the investigation was an "unlawful seizure of authority" over Ethereum, on the grounds that ETH is a "commodity" and therefore outside the SEC's jurisdiction.

The new Azure Blockchain Development Kit for Ethereum will help developers create and deploy ethereum-based apps on Azure Blockchain Service or the ethereum blockchain

Grayscale operates an Ethereum Trust focused on institutional investors. In 2020, it has been building up its Ethereum holdings at a faster rate. It has purchased an amount of Ethereum equivalent to half of the new supply of coins in 2020.

Ethereum, which launched in 2015, is the network on which its tradable token Ether (ETH) runs. In short, Ethereum acts as a platform on which developers can build projects or solutions. When a project builds on Ethereum, it may come with an asset for use within that ecosystem, likely an ERC-20 token. Whenever a person sends ERC-20 tokens must also hold ETH in the same wallet to pay for the "gas" fees associated with the transaction. ETH derives its value from these gas fees, plus its usage as collateral, its ability to be lent and borrowed, its use as a medium of exchange for trading and NFTs (nonfungible tokens), and the fact that it can be staked for interest. Also, much of the crypto-asset decentralized finance (DeFi) sector began on, and is still based on, Ethereum.

VanEck has filed a proposal for an Ethereum exchange-traded fund (ETF) with the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). The proposed VanEck Ethererum Trust, which would trade on the CBOE, would track the MVIS CryptoCompare Ethereum Benchmark Rate, an index developed by a VanEck affiliate that bears a lot of similarity to the rate underpinning VanEck's potential bitcoin ETF. The benchmark would aggregate median prices from the most liquid, lowest risk five Ethereum exchanges worldwide. These prices would then be weighted by volume.

"For now, it appears unlikely Ethereum will be dethroned in the short-term. Ethereum has a very firm and clear first-mover advantage over its competitors. It not only has the highest dominance in terms of the network value but also outdoes the competition in several key factors. In a nutshell, these factors are-the number of active users; the ERC-20 (Ethereum) token being the most adopted standard for newly issued crypto-assets; third party adoption for service and infrastructure; and overall network security."