The long-awaited protocol merge is here and Ethereum miners are mining faster than ever in preparation. This surge has pushed the Ethereum hashrate to an all-time high of 1.131 petahash per second. This represents a 13% rise over the last three months.
The Long-Awaited Transition to Proof-of-stake is Here
If you have been following up with the development of Ethereum over the years, you will know that the network has been moving in different stages of development. All the stages have brought Ethereum closer to the proof-of-stake protocol and the community is finally ready to merge and become a full proof-of-stake protocol.
On the 7th of April, the hashrate surpassed its previous all-time high of 1.032 petahash per second for the first time since January 9th, 2022. The new all-time high is 13% higher than the January level at 1.131. The transition will happen via The Merge and the entire community is in consensus regarding the decision to move to PoS. This explains the rapid increase in minting from all over the globe.
While the latest hashrate record is impressive, it is important to note that this is not a surprise. Over the last few months, there has been a significant increase in activity on the Ethereum network. Ethereum has maintained the highest daily mining rewards over the last 24 hours, surpassing Bitcoin and every other cryptocurrency.
At the time of writing, the cumulative mining reward from Ethereum was about $88.8 million. This represents a 16% difference from Bitcoin’s mining reward which stood at $76.4 million. The mining pools taking the lead in the current surge are Ethermine.org, F2pool, and Poolin in first, second, and third places respectively. Other key mining pools like Nanopool, Ezil, Flexpool, and a bunch of other smaller mining pools make up for the rest of the hashrate.
The upcoming Ethereum merge has come with many bullish price predictions for Ethereum. A few days ago, Mark Cuban, the maximalist billionaire said that the move from proof-of-work to proof-of-stake will make Ethereum more environmentally friendly since mining would no longer require major power like with Bitcoin. He also noted that when the merge is complete, issuance of ether will drop and this will have a deflationary effect on the token.
Ethereum Price Today
At the time of writing, the price of Ethereum was $3,243.63 against the USD, up 0.25% within the hour. The trading volume of the token was $10,985,740,764.63 and the market capitalization was $390,246,658,417.78. With the upcoming transition to a full proof-of-stake network instead of a PoW/PoS network, Ethereum will finally reach its full potential and there is no telling how high the price will go.
Despite the general optimism, there are still some skeptical investors waiting on the sidelines to see what happens since the merge also has the potential to ruin the cryptocurrency. No one can give an accurate prediction but things are looking up.
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