It has been a whole month since the success of the Ethereum merge. On the 15 of September, the Proof-of-Work Version of Ethereum was merged with the Beacon chain, creating a new version of ETH that runs on a Proof-of-Stake consensus mechanism.
One of the main motivators of this shift was to reduce the power consumed by the network and the rate of carbon emissions from the mining rigs running the Proof-of-Work version of Ethereum.
Right before the merge, there were projections of a more than 90% decrease in carbon emissions. Only a month after this historic event, the Ethereum chain achieved these figures.
As it stands, the daily issuance of Ethereum has dropped significantly, sitting at a level of only 3% of what it used to be.
The net daily emissions are also at an all-time low, amounting to a reduction of about 12,000 ETH per day, as indicated in a tweet by crypto and blockchain analytics platform Delphi Digital.
According to data from Ultra Sound Money, the network's total supply has grown by a figure of 7385.47 ETH. This is a dramatic improvement because if the ETH network were still running on the Proof-of-Work consensus algorithm, it would have added as many as 128,422.13 ETH to the supply.
This suggests that ETH is on its way to becoming deflationary. Coupled with this, Ethereum's supply has been up by 0.34% in the last 24 hours, compared to the 3.86 figure it would have been at under a Proof-of-Work algorithm in the same timeframe.
Not everyone is impressed with these improvements, though. Some have stated that the issuance rates are not entirely a result of the merge and that the rate of activity on the network has reduced, accounting for the reduced gas fees.
However, the network's activity was low even before the merge, and even then, more ETH tokens were still being issued.
These changes also mean that the merge has reduced the Ethereum network's overall power consumption by more than 99%, drastically reducing carbon emissions and making the network more sustainable.
At the time of writing, Ethereum trades for $1,223. it has been down about 7% over the past week and is currently down 5.67% over the last 24 hours. Ethereum is about to test the $1,200 zone after trending down from its pre-merge high of around $1700 over the last month.
According to data from CoinMarketCap, the market cap of ETH sits at around $149 million.
Meanwhile, top analyst and economist from Consensys, David Shuttleworth, has suggested that post-merge Ethereum is now the future of the internet and could be on its way to a huge bull run, as the entire crypto community expects.
Disclaimer: The author's comments and recommendations are solely for educational and informative purposes. They do not represent any financial or investment advice. Always DYOR (do your own research)