The pencilled-in preliminary date for The Merge, revealed by the Ethereum developer Superphiz, is less than two months away and the announcement seemingly caused a number of developments to happen. First off, the network’s native token ether saw a significant spike in value and secondly, Ethereum’s hashrate has dropped 18.21% since June 30. Data also shows that the number of ethereum stored on exchanges has seen a massive drop, as roughly 25.13 million ether was once held on exchanges on July 5, and today there’s only 22.77 million worth close to $35 billion.
Data Shows Significant Amounts of Ethereum Have Been Withdrawn From Centralized Exchanges
On July 9, 2022, Bitcoin.com News reported on the delayed difficulty bomb and the fact that The Merge would be pushed back at least until September. The Merge is basically the upgrade that finally transitions the Ethereum (ETH) network from proof-of-work (PoW) to proof-of-stake (PoS).
There are now two chains, with one that still leverages PoW, and the Beacon chain which is designed for PoS. On that same day, it was reported that 13,012,469 ETH was deposited into the ETH 2.0 contract. Since then, 136,416 ether has been deposited into the contract and there are 410,903 validators.
On July 14, software developer and Ethereum Beacon chain community director, Superphiz, revealed the possible date for The Merge and the timeline noted it could take place during the week of September 19. The developer stressed, however, that the date was not final and that the community should pay attention to official announcements.
Since then, ETH has managed to gain 36.8% against the U.S. dollar in 30 days, as The Merge bolstered the
