Ethereum completed a major network upgrade to its blockchain. Referred to as “the Merge,” the upgrade will transition the blockchain to a proof-of-stake consensus mechanism from its current proof-of-work approach.

The new consensus mechanism will randomly select validators in proportion to the quantity of Ethereum tokens staked to the network, with a minimum required stake of 32 ETH.

The update ends the blockchain’s reliance on mining to validate the network, a process that has been under heavy scrutiny for its excess energy consumption and environmental impact. The Ethereum foundation claims that the upgrade can potentially reduce the blockchain’s energy consumption by more than 99%.

Analyst QuickTake: The long-awaited upgrade to the Ethereum blockchain comes after several delays. While the merge itself is not expected to impact the transaction speeds and gas fees of the network, it is a foundation stone for the series of planned upgrades such as sharding , which is expected to ship next year. This, combined with layer-2 solutions such as rollups, is expected to bring Ethereum to the promised throughput of 100,000 transactions per second.