Vitalik Buterin, the creator of Ethereum, has suggested that the upgrade of Ethereum’s Merge will make a visible impact on Proof-of-Stake.
Last week at the Ethereum Community Conference, Buterin said to Bankless co-host David Hoffman that the sentiment in the crypto space would change with the network’s long-awaited update.
He added that, once the Merge happens, the morale of the developers who are building project on the Ethereum will be lifted.
Buterin also stated that — as the update is still awaiting to be launched — it was “not priced in”. To clarify what he meant by that, he was mainly commenting on his confidence in Ethereum than the price of Ether (ETH).
“I basically expect that the Merge is going to be kind of, not priced in, by which I mean like not even just like market terms, but even just kind of like psychological and narrative terms,” said Buterin.
Numerous Ethereum enthusiasts have anticipated a price rally for ETH after the Merge update. However, considering that ETH is currently still short of its peak by over 60%, the asset has a long way to go before it can reach its highs.
The Ethereum founder also commented on other huge technological developments occurring in the blockchain’s ecosystem.
As for the development of Layer 2 scaling solutions, he admitted that it has not been meeting market demand — before noting that the zkEVM solutions entering the market and the rollups have been seeing some positive developments.
Although the Merge update has been delayed for years and experienced some setbacks, Buterin said that they cannot postpone the launch date forever. That being said, its planned launch date has yet to be announced.
The Merge will have a last run-through on the Goerli testnet ahead of its mainnet launch. The run-through will happen sometime between August 6 and 12, according to Tim Beiko, one of the Ethereum founding members. The main event is scheduled around mid-September, which may be subject to change.