a less energy-intensive technology to run its blockchain on Thursday, with “Happy Merge Day” turning into a greeting of choice among stakeholders.
The “The Merge”, or how the transition is known, was touted as one of the most important events for the cryptocurrency industry worldwide.
The completion of the long-anticipated transition was met with cheer in the Web3 community on social media in what has been a gloomy year for crypto in India.
Over 30,000 people globally, at one point, joined the “Ethereum Mainnet Merge Viewing Party” on YouTube hosted by the Ethereum Foundation as it happened in real-time.
The transition into a more energy-efficient blockchain platform could bring in more institutional participation and developer adoption for Ethereum, venture capitalists and founders told ET.
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Ethereum has the highest adoption among developers and Decentralised Finance (DeFi) projects.
According to digiconomist.com, a platform that tracks the impact of digital trends, prior to The Merge, a single Ethereum transaction footprint was equivalent to the power consumption of an average US household over 6.76 days.
Now, that will change, and Ethereum is expected to become 99% more energy efficient.
The reduced carbon footprint is significant for institutions that need to meet certain ESG (environmental, social, and governance) mandates in their portfolios, said Aashima Arora, a Web3 venture capitalist.
“Institutional participation will increase as it is easier to buy, stake and participate in various simple and complex financial instruments in both DeFi and traditional finance,” said Pranav Sharma, founding partner at Woodstock Fund, a Web3-focussed fund investing in early and growth-stage startups. “There could be some short-term stress due to macroeconomic headwinds. But as we zoom out and look back, this may be the point where the decoupling of Ethereum from Bitcoin or digital assets from macro could begin.”
Vikas Singh, cofounder of the NFT-derivative platform Bliv.Club, who streamed the watch party and viewed it along with his team in the run-up to the final hour, said the event will draw more developers into the ecosystem, especially those who were earlier not taking part because of Ethereum’s carbon footprint.
He said it would also bring in more education around the public blockchain’s use.
“The claim to not to use public chains because of the high electricity consumption will become a thing of the past after this,” Singh said.
ET reported on September 15 that leading up to the merge, Indian cryptocurrency exchanges were witnessing a bump up in trading volumes of Ether, the cryptocurrency asset of Ethereum, whose price has remained relatively stable post-merge as of writing this article.
Ether was down less than 1% in the last 24 hours, according to Coingeck.com.
Sathvik Vishwanath, cofounder and CEO of crypto platform Unocoin, said the consequences of the merge would become apparent in the next few days.
“Pricing action is not there. The volumes are high as some people are buying it anticipating forked coins, and on the other side, some are selling as they don’t want to stay invested while the effects fully play out,” Vishwanath said.
Several Indian crypto exchanges, including Unocoin, have paused withdrawals and deposits for Ethereum and related crypto assets and are warning investors about the possibility of high volatility in the coming days.
