September 15th could be a historic day for the Ethereum merger. The arrival of The Merge Ethereum This will mean a revolution in the short term that has raised numerous doubts, rumors, fake news and even illusions that will not come true. For this reason, the Ethereum Foundation itself, which is in charge of piloting this entire process, wanted to explain the false myths surrounding Merge.
Myth 1: The Ethereum merger will reduce gas fee prices
False. The Ethereum Foundation makes it clear: "The merger is a change in the consensus mechanism, not an expansion of network capacity, and will not result in a reduction in gas fees.” They clarify: “Gas fees are a product of network demand relative to network capacity. The Merger deprecates the use of proof-of-work, moving to proof-of-stake for consensus, but does not significantly change any parameters that directly influence network capacity or performance.”
Myth 2: Transactions will be much faster with The Merge
False. While it is true that transactions will gain some speed, It will be practically an unnoticeable change for the average person. “Historically, in proof-of-work, the goal was to have a new block every ~13,3 seconds. On the Beacon chain, slots occur exactly every 12 seconds, and each slot is an opportunity for a validator to publish a block. Most slots have blocks, but not necessarily all.” Thus, in proof-of-stake, blocks will occur ~10% more frequently than in proof-of-work, a rather insignificant change and users are unlikely to notice.
Now, as we see in this new, The Merge will attract institutional investors to Ethereum, according to several analysts. In the Bit2Me Suite, we can find different very interesting products for both companies and institutions as well as for individuals who want to make their way into the new crypto universe safely and with the best guarantees.
Myth 3: Having a node means owning 32 ETH
«False. Anyone is free to sync their own self-verified copy of Ethereum (i.e. run a node). No ETH is required. Not before The Merge, not after The Merge, not ever,» they note. However, there are nuances.Block proposing nodes are only a small number of the total Ethereum nodes.. This category includes proof-of-work (PoW) mining nodes and proof-of-stake (PoS) validator nodes. This category requires committing economic resources (such as proof-of-work GPU hash power or proof-of-stake ETH) in exchange for being able to occasionally propose the next block and earn protocol rewards," they explain.
However, "the other nodes in the network (i.e. the majority) They do not have to commit any financial resources beyond a consumer computer with 1-2TB of available storage and an internet connection. These nodes do not propose blocks, but they still play a critical role in network security by holding all block proposers accountable by listening for new blocks and verifying their validity upon arrival according to the network consensus rulesIf the block is valid, the node continues to propagate it across the network. If the block is invalid for any reason, the node software will discard it as invalid and stop propagating it.
Myth 4: You will be able to withdraw staked ETH after The Merge
False. In this sense, although the ETH Foundation refers to ETH as such, it is actually referring to what, until recently, were known as ETH2, that is, the tokens intended to provide stability to the new network. For this reason, the ETH Foundation assures that NOr it will be possible to withdraw those ETH2 until after 6-12 months after The Merge occurs. This will avoid potential network instabilities and facilitate all new validation and PoS processes.
Myth 5: When withdrawals are enabled, all validators will leave at once
«Validator outputs are limited by the protocol, so only six validators can exit per epoch (every 6,4 minutes, i.e. 1.350 per day, or only 43.200 ETH per day out of the 10+ million ETH staked). This rate limit is adjusted based on the total ETH staked and prevents a mass exodus of funds. It also prevents a potential attacker from using your stake to commit a slashable offense and walking away with your entire stake balance in the same epoch before the protocol can apply the slashing penalty,” they explain.
Myth 6: The APR will be triple when The Merge occurs
False. “Staker APR is expected to increase post-merge. To understand to what extent, it’s important to recognize where this APR increase is coming from. It’s not coming from an increase in the protocol’s ETH issuance (ETH issuance post-merge is decreasing by ~90%), but rather it’s a reallocation of transaction fees that will start going to validators instead of miners,” the Foundation says.
Myth 7: The Merge will cause a halt in the Ethereum blockchain
“The Merge,” they say, “is like swapping an engine on a rocket mid-flight, and is designed to happen without the need to pause anything during the swap. The Merge will be triggered by the Terminal Total Difficulty (TTD), which is a cumulative measure of the total mining power that has been invested in building the chain. When the time comes, and this criterion is met, blocks will switch from being built via proof-of-work in one block to being built via proof-of-stake in the next.” And This will happen on September 15th. Are you ready?
