By Alicia Maher
Ethereum CEO, Vitalik Buterin, has revealed that the success of the London hard fork has assured him the switch to ETH 2.0 will be an additional success.
Buterin Happy With London Upgrade Success
In an interview with Bloomberg, Buterin revealed that “the key part of the London upgrade was the EIP-1559 implementation.” The upgrade, which has been live for less than 24 hours, has modified the fee structure such that part of the transactions fee will be burned.
Since the upgrade, over 3,600 ETH (valued at about $9.9 million) have been burned. Buterin further said that the London upgrade’s success proves that “Ethereum can make major changes to his operating mechanism.” He also said, “certainly, I am now more assured about the merge.”
Per an official statement, the present Ethereum main network will be integrated with the proof-of-stake beacon chain. Thus, making Ethereum switch from proof-of-work to proof-of-stake.
While this switch is to be completed before the rollout of the shared chain, it is unlikely that the switch will be completed this year. The only good news is that ETH 2.0 developers are making efforts to ensure that it happens earlier than planned.
When the integration is completed, ETH 2.0 will run smart contracts on proof-of-stake. Thus, there will be little or no need for miner activities, and the blockchain will consume much less energy.
London Upgrade Also Eliminated Network Congestion
Even though the fee burning was the most anticipated, the variable block sizes were another implemented proposal. The use of variable block sizes will reduce wait time for processing transactions, especially when the network is congested.
As the name implies, the variable blocks expand or contracts depending on the volume of pending transactions. According to Buterin, this feature is important for enhanced user experience. “Now, any transactions sent can be verified along with the next block, and that would improve user experience.”
The upgrade and the news surrounding it have had a positive effect on the Ethereum market sentiments. Some analysts are even claiming that the fallout from the upgrade and switch to ETH 2.0 might make Ethereum dethrone bitcoin as the king coin.
As of this writing, Ethereum has surged by about 4% in the last 24 hours and trades at about $2,900 on CoinGecko. Ethereum price has surged by an astonishing 38% in two days, and so far this year, it has risen by almost 290%.
Cathie Wood Praises Ethereum Projects Development
Meanwhile, the Ethereum upgrade is receiving support from top crypto proponents. The latest is from Cathie Wood (CEO of ARK investment management). Wood praised the decentralized finance (DeFi) innovation in the Ethereum blockchain via a tweet this morning.
Cathie Wood Tweet. Source: Twitter
Wood’s show of support goes beyond mere words. Her company holds approximately 722,000 shares of grayscale Ethereum trust, as indicated in the firm’s recent filing with the US Securities and Exchange Commission. The London Hardfork has caused ETH to keep trading in the green and even multi-month peak of about $2,900.