ETH - Ethereum Rises 6% Days Ahead of the Merge
As of 9:46 a.m. ET Tuesday, the price of Ethereum (CRYPTO: ETH) had risen by nearly 6% over the prior 24 hours as investors looked ahead to the much-anticipated "Merge" and the completion of a series of network upgrades that have been ongoing for years.
The Merge is expected to take place sometime between Sept. 10 and Sept. 20, although Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin wrote on Twitter Monday that it will happen sometime around Sept. 13 and Sept. 15.
When that happens, Ethereum -- the world's second-largest cryptocurrency -- will shift from a network operating on a proof-of-work (PoW) mechanism to a proof-of-stake (PoS) mechanism. The first is the type of protocol that Bitcoin and numerous other cryptocurrencies operate on: They use lots of computing power to rapidly solve the cryptographic puzzles necessary for validating transactions on those blockchains and adding new blocks to them. In return for contributing that energy-intensive computing work, these "miners" can be rewarded with new tokens.
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Ethereum Rises 6% Days Ahead of "the Merge