Despite the fact that Ethereum supporters have a reason to rejoice with the upcoming Solid evidence Merge, a few roadblocks appear to be impeding the network’s progress.
The “Merge” Delayed
Earlier this week, a tweet from Tim Beiko plummeted the already-daunting spirits of Ethereum supporters when he stated that the much-expected shift to POS(proof of stakes) might not take place until the fall, despite the fact that Ethereum is “in the concluding chapter of the proof of work” era.
As Beiko, who works as a Supervisor for the Developers Call in the Ethereum Foundation, revealed that, Ethereum developers had recently successfully launched their first mainnet “the shadow fork” – which was intended to be used as a test run before the switch in agreement procedures – on the Ethereum network.
Several people were taken by surprise when the Ethereum foundation announced that the “merge” would take place sometime in Q2. This is only the latest in a long line of deferrals even by Ethereum foundation, which dates back to 2019.
Very Cheap Gas Fees
Following Beiko’s announcement on Friday that the merger will not result in a significant reduction in gas fees, Ethereum aficionados were even more depressed. In an interview with Laura Shin, presenter of the untamed podcast, the developer stated that while the merger could enhance Ethereum’s processing rate by 9 percent, it would only result in a “slight” reduction in gas fees.
Although they were focusing on pre-merge projects to cope with the increased gas fees, he stated that they will be deploying “a complete data breaking procedure” post-merge to tackle the issue of incessant fee collection after the merger.
In contrast to sharding, which involves dividing a database into smaller sections (shards) in order to reduce the amount of gas used and the amount of time it takes to execute a transaction on ZK rollups, which results in a large reduction in gas charge and processing period.
Ether Market Stock Drops
However, other crypto enthusiasts believe that the delay in the Merge, as well as the deceiving news about Ethereum’s gas pricing, may pave the way for alternative networks to advance more quickly in the future. Already, Ether has gotten a great deal of criticism from a variety of sources, including 3AC’s Zhu and Su, for the heavy price of transactions and the lengthy process leading up to the merger. According to noted crypto commentator Lark Davis, platforms such as Cardano, Avalanches and Solana, among different layer-1 networks, have the potential to quickly catch up with Ethereum’s market capitalization.
Cardano, for example, is already a hive of development activity, owing to the fact that its own user base keeps rising. Due to the fact that it has already outperformed Ethereum in terms of trading fees, the network has earned the nickname “Ethereum killer.”
Also notable have been its speed and scalability, which have drawn an enormous number of projects and users to it. In other networks, this trend has been reflected, as Ether’s market stock has decreased from 22.36 percent in December month of 2021 to currently 19.3 percent, with commentators now anticipating that Ethereum’s market supremacy will decline even further the big “merge” delay.