While this upgrade including sharding is yet to come, it bears noting that gas fees on the Ethereum blockchain reached another yearly high on Friday. IntoTheBocks, a leading cryptocurrency market intelligence, and analytics platform dropped the update.

Per the update, the total fees on the Ethereum network surged to a massive $46.1 million on Friday, indicating an increase in the token demand and user activity on the blockchain network. 

Notably, the low scalability design of the Ethereum network makes it incapable of handling numerous transactions per second. Hence, when there is a notable growth in the number of users initiating transactions per second on the proof-of-stake (PoS) network, fees to process it by the network validators tend to spike. 

Therefore, the recent yearly high in gas fees recorded on the Ethereum network was triggered by the Blur airdrop rush and the ongoing free NFT mint connected to Coinbase’s layer-2 project, Base.  

“Ethereum hit another yearly high in fees, mostly thanks to the Blur incentives and Coinbase’s free NFT mint. This surge in fees indicates a rise in demand and activity on the network,” IntoTheBlock wrote. 

Ethereum hit another yearly high in fees, mostly thanks to the @blur_io incentives and #Coinbase's free NFT mint . This surge in fees indicates a rise in demand and activity on the network. #cryptocurrency #Ethereum $ETH $BLUR #Base pic.twitter.com/H8cAYKUuQq

— IntoTheBlock (@intotheblock) February 24, 2023

Coinbase NFT and Blur Airdrop Effect

Last Thursday, the largest United States-based crypto exchange launched an Ethereum Layer 2 blockchain network called ‘Base’ on the testnet. The Base is said to be a secure, cheap, developer-friendly solution for developers to build decentralized applications. 

The catch of the testnet launch was the non-fungible token (NFT) collection released alongside Base. Interestingly, this NFT collection dubbed ‘Base, Introduced’,  has been made available for free minting on the Ethereum network by anyone courtesy of Coinbase’s partnership with Zora, an NFT minting source. 

But to successfully get a unit of the NFT, your wallet must hold at least 0.000777 ETH to pay as a gas fee.

Noteworthy is that one wallet is entitled to only one NFT. More so, the open-edition free mint of ‘Base,Introduced’ will end on February 27. At press time, 209,600 ‘Base, Introduced’ have been minted which justifies the increased activity and fees on the ETH network. 

The tension to qualify for the season two BLUR token airdrop introduced by the NFT marketplace, Blur has equally contributed to the high activity seen on the Ethereum network. According to Blur, it would issue over 300 million BLUR tokens to loyal community members.

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According to the report, the new DeFi platform is planned to launch by May 2023.

Read Also: Vitalik Buterin Pinpoints Ethereum Network Major Challenge and the Solution

Going by the United Nations brief, Sberbank is a majority state-owned bank that is home to one-third of all aggregate banking assets in Russia.

The bank reportedly hopes to begin open testing on the DeFi platform in March and fully open it up by the end of April with the possibility of conducting commercial operations.

The platform’s customers will be able to use the popular non-custodial wallet MetaMask, according to Konstantin Klimenko, Sberbank’s blockchain laboratory product director. Klimenko says he believes DeFi could displace traditional banking.

Read Also: Ethereum Layer-2s Will Drive Crypto Payments in 2023, Coin Bureau Predicts

The European Union (EU) introduced a round of crypto-related sanctions on Russia in October in response to the country’s continued military aggression against Ukraine.

The sanctions involved banning all wallet and custody services to Russia, and they came just weeks after the Russian Ministry of Finance and the Bank of Russia acknowledged it was necessary to soon enable cross-border crypto payments.

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In a new blog post, Buterin points out that privacy is the major challenge that the Ethereum network currently faces, which is making a notable portion of people’s life public for everyone to see.

Read Also: Vitalik Buterin Unveils a Modified Ethereum Roadmap to Fix Censorship Concerns

Vitalik Buterin noted:

“By default, anything that goes onto a public blockchain is public. Increasingly, this means not just money and financial transactions, but also ENS (Ethereum Name Service) names, POAPs (Proof of Attendance Protocols), NFTs, soulbound tokens, and much more. In practice, using the entire suite of Ethereum applications involves making a significant portion of your life public for anyone to see and analyze.

“Improving this state of affairs is an important problem, and this is widely recognized. So far, however, discussions on improving privacy have largely centered around one specific use case: privacy-preserving transfers (and usually self-transfers) of ETH and mainstream ERC20 tokens.”

Suggesting a solution, Buterin said the best way to tackle privacy on the Ethereum network is via stealth addresses, stating that crypto wallets can enable users to leverage stealth addresses by making it an option for them when initiating transactions:

“Basic stealth addresses can be implemented fairly quickly today, and could be a significant boost to practical user privacy on Ethereum. They do require some work on the wallet side to support them. That said, it is my view that wallets should start moving toward a more natively multi-address model (eg. creating a new address for each application you interact with could be one option) for other privacy-related reasons as well.

Read Also: Vitalik Buterin: If Ethereum (ETH) Succeeds, We Are Going To Have another Bull Market

“However, stealth addresses do introduce some longer-term usability concerns, such as difficulty of social recovery. It is probably okay to simply accept these concerns for now, eg. by accepting that social recovery will involve either a loss of privacy or a two-week delay to slowly release the recovery transactions to the various assets (which could be handled by a third-party service).

“In the longer term, these problems can be solved, but the stealth address ecosystem of the long term is looking like one that would really heavily depend on zero-knowledge proofs.”

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In the Thursday tweet, Vitalik Buterin shared the updated Ethereum roadmap diagram for the community to look through, highlighting the key milestones with ticks. Particularly, these big changes are regarding the earlier scheduled Surge, Scourge, Verge, Purge, and Scourge upgrades. 

Vitalik Buterin wrote; “Big changes: The Verge is not just about “verkle trees”, it’s about “verification”. Endgame: fully SNARKed Ethereum. The Scourge (new): ensure reliable and fair credibly neutral transaction inclusion, solve MEV issues. Single slot finality as stage 2 Merge milestone.”

More concrete milestones in every category. More explicit role for quantum-proofness as a necessary component of the “endgame” protocol, he added. 

Updated roadmap diagram! pic.twitter.com/MT9BKgYcJH

— vitalik.eth (@VitalikButerin) November 4, 2022

Read Also: Fidelity Announces Plans to Give Institutional Investors Access to Ethereum (ETH)

It is said that these updates seek to fix the current censorship and centralization problem on the widely used blockchain as a result of the successful Merge upgrade. Also, Buterin aspires to make the Ethereum blockchain fully SNARKed, by moving the network to quantum-safe SNARKs (e.g STARKS)

SNARK, which means Succinct Non-Interactive Argument of Knowledge, is a technology that aids in providing anonymity for users. It is the technology adopted for privacy coins. Other improvements the updated roadmap intends to bring to the proof-of-stake blockchain include basic rollup scaling, full rollup scaling, and verifiable delay function specs (VDFs), among others. 

Whereas the Merge upgrade was successfully executed in September, the updated Ethereum roadmap showed that there will be a stage 2 Merge upgrade, where Single Slot Finality (SSF) would be the outcome. 

Read Also: Vitalik Buterin Lays Out End Goals and Big Visions He Hopes for Ethereum’s Future

Community Reactions

Several members of the Ethereum (ETH) community have dropped their observations and opinions on the updated roadmap while a few Bitcoin (BTC) maximalists criticized it accordingly. 

Eric Wall, a crypto proponent noted that all the ”sharding” terminology used in the previous Ethereum roadmap has been dropped from The Surge, mentioning there was no real information on the modified roadmap. Notably, the Surge is the next upgrade after the Merge and it aims to make the blockchain more scalable through sharding and rollups. 

Likewise, Apollonian Rising, a Bitcoin (BTC) maximalist criticized the update stating that there is a case of “overengineering” in the ETH blockchain. He added that ‘Bitcoin is so beautifully simple’ while ‘Ethereum is the digital Talmud’.

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As revealed on Beaconcha.in, an open source Ethereum explorer, the number of total node validators on the blockchain network has set a new record barely two weeks after the Merge upgrade was executed on the Ethereum (ETH) blockchain. 

According to data collected by TimesTabloid, the total number of active validators on the Ethereum (ETH) network is 436, 721 while there are only 110 pending node validators on the network. These figures are valid as of September 28, at the time of writing. 

Read Also: Ethereum’s Vitalik Buterin Discusses the Potential of Layer-3 Protocols

Recall that, Vitalik Buterin and the Ethereum Foundation finally activated the biggest and most complex upgrade in the history of the blockchain platform on September 15. This development transformed the second-largest crypto project as well as the first smart contract blockchain into an ecologically friendly and less energy-intensive platform. 

Likewise, interest in Ethereum staking is growing rapidly among crypto investors and institutions following the emergence of Ethereum 2.0 where staking replaced mining. Data from the same tracking platform showed that staked ETH is growing simultaneously with total node validators. At the time of writing, the number of Ethereum staked is 13,976,072 ETH. 

It is worth noting that several top crypto exchanges like Coinbase and financial institutions including SEBA Bank rolled out Ethereum staking services for their institutional clients. Meanwhile, in a recent statement, SEC Chair Gary Gensler noted that the PoS system currently powering the Ether token could trigger securities laws. 

Related: Popular Swiss Bank Enables Ethereum (ETH) Staking for Institutional Clients: Details

According to the SEC’s statement, “Cryptocurrencies and intermediaries that allow holders to “stake” their coins might pass a key test used by courts to determine whether an asset is a security. Known as the Howey test, it examines whether investors expect to earn a return from the work of third parties.”

Ripple CEO Brad Garlinghouse later slammed the SEC for the assertion regarding Ethereum (ETH) mentioning that he holds ETH, XRP, and BTC.

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Regardless of the fact that the miner-led post-Merge hardfork is yet to happen, FTX, Bitfinex, Bybit, Gate.io, FTX.US, and MEXC Global exchanges have launched spot trading for the Ethereum POW Fork IOU token (ETHW). Bitrue, Phemex, and Digifinex are the recent exchanges to support the token with more exchanges expected to list the token probably after the execution of the miner-led post-merge hardfork. 

According to data from Coingecko, the global FTX exchange recorded the highest trading volume for ETHW, followed by MEXC Global and Bybit exchange. At the time of writing, FTX has recorded a massive ETHW volume of $37,930,802 out of the overall $44,230,207 24 hours volume. While MEXC Global has recorded $5,151,596 ETHW in volume, Bybit has processed $5,129,682 ETHW volume so far.

Read Also: The Merge Activated; Ethereum is Now a Proof-of-Stake Blockchain

To celebrate the merge, Bybit announced the launch of the USDT trading pair against ETHW. Users can now trade the post-merge forked token using the largest stablecoin by market capitalization. MEXC Global and Gate.io have also introduced the ETHW/USDT pair on their respective platforms. ETHW/USD trading pair is also now available on the FTX. 

Per the update, Bybit Official tweeted, “ETHW/USDT is now LIVE for Spot trading! ETHW deposits and withdrawals are coming soon! Trade now with 0 fees.” ETHW deposits and withdrawals were opened on the exchange hours after this announcement. 

$ETHW is now open for deposits!

Deposit and trade with 0 fees: https://t.co/EE7fn790nl https://t.co/V5wH6f2kAr

— Bybit (@Bybit_Official) September 15, 2022

Read Also: Ethereum (ETH) Merge-Inspired Song and NFTs Flood the Market

While Ethereum’s transition is a huge step forward, some players and crypto miners in the industry believe PoW is essential in the space. Hence, a coordinated post-merge hardfork is scheduled to happen 24 hours after the merge activation. Categorically, the fork is expected to split the Ethereum chain in two with one chain running as proof-of-stake and the other proof-of-work (PoW) based. 

At the time of writing, Ethereum PoW Fork IOU (ETHW) is trading for $11.55. This token listed by several exchanges is an IOU cryptocurrency where IOU means “I owe you.” The “owing” comes into play because ETHW will be the result of the post-merge Ethereum hard fork which is yet to happen.

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In the words of the Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin, “And we finalized!/Happy merge all. This is a big moment for the Ethereum ecosystem. Everyone who helped make the merge happen should feel very proud today.” 

And we finalized!

Happy merge all. This is a big moment for the Ethereum ecosystem. Everyone who helped make the merge happen should feel very proud today.

— vitalik.eth (@VitalikButerin) September 15, 2022

This upgrade has been welcomed with lots of excitement by members of crypto Twitter while prominent figures like the Cardano founder, Charles Hoskinson have sent in congratulatory messages. Others have lauded the fact that the Merge caused no network instability with Buterin commenting that, “so far, the percentage of full blocks has dropped from ~20% to ~10%.

pic.twitter.com/nkPUN2y0I4

— Charles Hoskinson (@IOHK_Charles) September 15, 2022

Read Also: Here’s What Vitalik Buterin Thinks of Proof-of-Work as He Defends Proof-of-Stake

The Merge Impact

While there have been several upgrades on the Ethereum blockchain, the Merge is regarded as the biggest upgrade ever since the emergence of the platform co-founded by Vitalik Buterin, Gavin Wood, Charles Hoskinson, and about 5 others. 

In 2015, Ethereum was launched as a proof-of-work network that supports mining. Considering the downsides of the PoS consensus algorithm mechanism, Vitalik Buterin and the development team set out to transition the blockchain to proof-of-stake (PoS). 

However, this PoS journey began in December 2020 when the Beacon Chain was launched and has since been running in parallel with the PoW-based execution layer (mainnet) until the activation of the Merge on September 15. 

Following the implementation of the merge, Proof-of-work is no longer valid under the rules of consensus on Ethereum. “All execution layer activity will be included in “beacon blocks”, which are published and attested to by proof-of-stake validators,” Ethereum Foundation noted. 

Henceforth, mining is no longer supported on the second-largest crypto blockchain as the Merge has ushered in the staking approach. Also, this upgrade will reduce global energy consumption by 0.2%, according to Justin Drake, a leading Ethereum researcher. 

Read Also: Is The Merge Coming To Reduce Gas Fees? Ethereum Foundation Clarifies

While this development reduces the energy consumption on Ethereum by approximately 99.99%, it brings net ETH inflation to zero or less by reducing the ETH issuance rate per day by about 90%. 

In other words, the units of ETH entering the market have dropped drastically to approximately 1,600 ETH per day from the previous 13,000 ETH per day before the Merge. 

As earlier stated by Buterin, Ethereum is now 55% complete and should be able to process 100,000 transactions per second. It is worth noting that this upgrade will have no significant effect on gas fees attached to transactions carried out on the network. The merge is only setting the stage for more developments regarding scalability and low transaction fees to take place on the Ethereum blockchain.

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SEBA Bank, which is a crypto and blockchain-friendly bank, has therefore launched a service that will allow its institutional clients to seamlessly stake and earn rewards on the Ethereum (ETH) network. 

This development is an expansion of the bank’s already existing comprehensive staking management platform. SEBA Bank’s staking platform now supports three PoS-based crypto tokens including Tezos (XTZ), Polkadot (DOT), and Ethereum (ETH).

Ultimately, the Swiss bank staking platform offers a fully integrated institutional-grade solution for generating rewards from investments on proof-of-stake (PoS) networks. Generally, it broadens access to sustainable crypto investment products.

Read Also: Over 2.6 Million ETH Worth $3.8 Billion Burned Since EIP-1559 Implementation

SEBA Bank’s Ethereum Staking Services

The top financial institution believes that institutions can greatly contribute to the security of the Ethereum network via the staking of Ethereum (ETH) after The Merge’s implementation. In addition to the high demand for institutional-grade digital asset yield and staking services from clients, SEBA has also rolled out the Ethereum staking feature. 

“The launch of SEBA Bank’s Ethereum staking services caters to growing demand from institutions to manage a range of digital asset yield use cases from staking to decentralized finance (DeFi),” the announcement said. 

Moreover, the SEBA-powered staking management platform is designed to enable clients to earn rewards in a flexible and accessible manner.

It is worth noting that staking rewards are provided every month on the platform. The bank added that after the Merge, “adjustable lock-up periods will be enabled with a cost-effective fee structure applied to guarantee asset security.”

Ethereum (ETH) Merge is Here

The biggest upgrade on the largest smart contract platform is finally here. On September 6, Bellatrix, the final upgrade before the Merge was successfully implemented. As earlier scheduled, the Ethereum merge will take place between September 10-20. 

The upgrade is crucial and highly anticipated because it will transition Ethereum to a proof-of-stake (PoS) consensus mechanism. SEBA bank has therefore made a strategic move to allow its institutional clients to access Ethereum’s rewarding staking economy.

Mathias Schütz, Head of Technology and Client Solutions of SEBA Bank commented:

 “The Ethereum merge is an anticipated and significant milestone for the world’s second-largest cryptocurrency, delivering improvements for its users across the areas of security, scalability, and sustainability. The launch of our Ethereum staking services will enable institutional investors to play a key role in securing the future of the network, via a trusted, secure, and fully regulated counterparty.”

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It should be noted that the implementation of the Merge will phase out miners on the network and welcome staking providers. This event is expected to expose Ethereum (ETH) on big exchanges to censorship from authorities.

Read Also: Ethereum’s Vitalik Buterin To Release a Book Titled “Proof of Stake” in September

In a new dual interview with Brian Armstrong, the CEO of Coinbase, Buterin said rather than complying, it’s honorable for exchanges on the Ethereum network to opt out of rendering staking services if faced with censorship from regulators after The Merge.

Vitalik Buterin noted:

“Obviously, I’m fully supportive of people’s need to comply with the regulators in whatever jurisdiction that they’re in. But if in whatever jurisdiction you’re in it happens to be impossible to simultaneously do that and be a good citizen of the Ethereum network then the honorable thing to do is to shut down. 

“But I think also it’s a very correct comment from a purely legal standpoint that, as far as I can tell, we are very far away from that point.”

What Could Make Ethereum Censorship Resistant

According to Buterin, for Ethereum to remain censorship-resistant, there is a need for some level of community coordination. He said it’s important not to be complacent at the moment:

“I believe in trying to kind of try many different strategies at the same time and not rely too much on one. I think that this discourse about ‘can we make the ecosystem more robust?’ and ‘can we make a staking ecosystem more robust?’ and make a staking ecosystem where as few stakers as possible are censoring transactions, like that’s also an important discussion to have.

Read Also: Ethereum Co-founder Vitalik Buterin Drops a Hot Take on Crypto Payment

“It’s an important effort to make, but it is something that requires effort. I think it’s important to remember that neither in Ethereum nor in Bitcoin nor in any other system, are we just kind of guaranteed that the outcomes we want happen automatically.

“I think even in the systems that try the hardest to call themselves fully automated, there’s definitely still some level of community coordination that’s required to make sure those things actually happen.”

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On-chain data reveals that Ethereum Miner Revenue for the month of August 2022 touched the $733.88 million mark. Whereas in July 2022, Ethereum miners made profits that only totaled $620.65 million.

Miners earn rewards by producing valid blocks as well as by processing transactions on the Ethereum blockchain and their rewards are usually paid in ETH.  

It is worth noting that monthly total miner revenue puts into consideration block subsidy or inflation rewards, transaction (gas) fees as well as Uncle rewards. 

Uncle block rewards on the Ethereum network are rewards awarded to miners for the creation of an uncle block included in a valid block added to the chain. It is similar to stale blocks on the Bitcoin (BTC) network. 

Inflation rewards contributed the largest to the $733.88 million profits recorded by ETH miners in August 2022. While $678.69 came from inflation rewards, $29.67 was derived from Uncle rewards while revenue made by ETH miners from transaction fees reached $25.52. 

So far, the highest revenue ($1.47 billion) made by Ethereum miners this year was spotted in January 2022. Since then, monthly revenue has been declining. 

Read Also: Upgrade Your Clients Before September 6,” Ethereum’s Vitalik Buterin Urges Node Operators

The Merge Will Cancel ETH Mining

While the upcoming Merge upgrade on the Ethereum blockchain is designed to make the biggest smart contract platform more scalable, less energy intensive, and complete; it will bring an end to miners’ financial activity. 

Post-merge, mining will no longer be supported on the Ethereum blockchain. The Merge is an upgrade that will transition the popular blockchain to operate using the proof-of-stake (PoS) consensus algorithm mechanism. 

Read Also: Ethereum’s Vitalik Buterin To Release a Book Titled “Proof of Stake” in September

Whereas proof-of-work supports token mining, proof-of-stake involves staking as the name implies.  

In a bid to keep Ethereum mining alive, Chandler Guo, a popular cryptocurrency miner, and other miners announced their plan to execute a post-Merge Ethereum hardfork that will give rise to another platform dubbed Ethereum POW (ETHPoW). 

In response to this plan, Vitalik Buterin, the creator of Ethereum noted that the planned miner-led hardfork will not succeed nor gain substantial adoption

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