Mark Cuban, a billionaire entrepreneur and longstanding crypto proponent, has declared his support for the biggest upgrade on the Ethereum blockchain – the Merge. The successful execution of this upgrade will cause Ethereum to evolve into a proof-of-stake (PoS) blockchain.
While many other players in the industry like Justin Sun have criticized the Ethereum blockchain PoS transition, Mark Cuban has counted himself among the supporters of the Merge upgrade.
In an interview with Fortune, the billionaire noted that he is a fan of the upcoming development, adding that he is super bullish on ETH.
Earlier this month, Justin Sun noted that proof-of-work (PoW) is still essential in the crypto industry as there are surplus PoS blockchain platforms.
In the same vein, a post-Merge Ethereum fork led by Chandler Guo, a popular Chinese crypto miner is being planned. The Tron founder along with many crypto exchanges has announced support for this miner-led fork.
Related: Vitalik Buterin Not Expecting the Planned Miner-led Ethereum Fork To Succeed, Warns Investors
However, Mark Cuban commented saying, “I’m a fan of the Merge, I think the energy usage issue is important.” Beyond marking the end of mining on the largest smart contract platform and taking up a consensus mechanism that will support crypto staking, the Ethereum blockchain will be ecologically friendly.
It is said that Ethereum’s overall energy consumption will decline by 99.9% after the Merge. However, the upgrade does not guarantee a reduction in gas fees and it may not considerably impact the transaction speed. The Merge will rather set the stage for other upgrades that will make Ethereum more scalable, complete, and less expensive to use.
Therefore, Cuban sees Ethereum’s move to proof-of-stake as a positive development for the blockchain and its native token. “But it’s long term. I don’t [know] if and when it goes up,” he said. “I think the applications to drive usage will be there,” Cuban added.
Although ETH has been on a downtrend in the past few days, the crypto investor remains bullish on the second-largest crypto by market capitalization. At the time of writing, ETH is trading for $1,663.62 showing a price decline of over 4% in the past 7 days, according to Coinmarketcap data.
Read Also: Over 13.3 Million ETH Now Staked in Ethereum 2.0 Contract as The Merge Nears
The Merge Looks Set
It is worth noting that the stage was set for the Ethereum network to transition from PoW to PoS two years ago following the launch of the Beacon Chain. After many years of strategizing and testing by developers, the highly anticipated Merge upgrade has finally been set to happen between September 10 and 20, 2022.
In preparation for this, Teku, an Ethereum 2.0 client recently released the latest update (v22.8.1) for Ethereum mainnet users to make their nodes Merge-ready. To avoid errors, mainnet users are to upgrade before the Merge date.
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