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The Ethereum Merge (September 15, 2022)

Paris at block 15,537,393.

Terminal total difficulty

The Merge was triggered not by a block height but by a terminal total difficulty of 58,750,000,000,000,000,000,000. Proof-of-work block 15,537,393 crossed it, and on September 15, 2022, at 06:42:42 UTC the Beacon Chain began proposing execution blocks.

Paris and Bellatrix

The upgrade combined the Bellatrix consensus fork and the Paris execution fork. Execution clients such as Geth and Nethermind paired with consensus clients over the Engine API, and the difficulty opcode was repurposed as PREVRANDAO.

Energy

The Ethereum Foundation estimated electricity use fell by about 99.95 percent, since validators run on ordinary servers rather than GPU farms. GPU miners moved to chains such as Ethereum PoW and Ethereum Classic, whose hashrate briefly jumped.

Issuance cut

Proof-of-work issuance was roughly 13,000 ETH per day. After the Merge, consensus rewards were about 1,700 ETH per day, an issuance drop near 90 percent. Combined with EIP-1559 burns, ETH supply fell by more than 300,000 ETH in the following year.

What didn't change

Withdrawals remained disabled until Shapella, and the Merge did not lower gas fees or raise throughput. It did set slot times to 12 seconds, which made block times regular compared with proof of work's variable intervals.

By the numbers

For The Ethereum Merge, the reference figures are date of September 15, 2022, final pow block of 15,537,393, energy reduction of ~99.95%, issuance drop of ~90%. The comparison table below lines up metric, before merge, after merge — Consensus: Proof of work / Proof of stake; Daily issuance: ~13,000 ETH / ~1,700 ETH; Block time: ~13 s variable / 12 s fixed; Energy: ~94 TWh/yr est. / ~0.01 TWh/yr est..

Modeling The Ethereum Merge with the Ethereum 32 ETH Validator Yield Calculator

The Ethereum 32 ETH Validator Yield Calculator takes three inputs — Validators, APR (%), ETH price ($). Yield = validators × 32 ETH × APR × price. With its default inputs (Validators = 1; APR (%) = 3.2; ETH price ($) = 3000) it returns 3,072 $; swap in the figures from The Ethereum Merge above to reproduce the scenario yourself.

Modeling The Ethereum Merge with the Supply Emission Inflation Calculator

The Supply Emission Inflation Calculator takes three inputs — Supply (M), Daily emission (K), Days. Inflation = daily emission × days ÷ supply. With its default inputs (Supply (M) = 1000; Daily emission (K) = 500; Days = 365) it returns 18.25 %; swap in the figures from The Ethereum Merge above to reproduce the scenario yourself.

Data Table

For educational and informational purposes only. Not financial, investment, tax or legal advice. Figures are approximate and historical; crypto assets are volatile and you may lose capital. Do your own research.