Investors in ether and its troubled twin stETH are nervously anticipating a crypto milestone: The merge.
The Ethereum Foundation, which uses the analogy of changing the engine of a spaceship mid-flight, says on its website that the merge is “shipping” around “Q3/Q4 2022.” “People are just scared that their stETH is not going to be worth anything because the Merge is probably going to take longer than expected,” said Xu.The upgrade will see ether mining transition away from the energy-intensive proof-of-work. Ethereum’s existing execution layer will merge with the new proof-of-stake consensus system.
It reached a market cap of $11 billion in May, according to price site CoinGecko, and until last month traded broadly at parity with ether. The stETH project was popular because while investors can earn interest elsewhere by “staking” their ether, to do so they must lock away a minimum of 32 ether until the network upgrades to the new standard.
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