What Is the Ethereum Merge?

• The Merge is the official name of the Ethereum blockchain's transition from PoW to PoS. Like Bitcoin, Ethereum is well known for its environmental impact, requiring more power than numerous large countries to keep its blockchain up and running and secure. After switching to PoS, it is thought Ethereum will consume 99.9 percent less energy.[1]

• As gratuitous energy waste is one of the main criticisms of cryptocurrency in general and specifically NFTs (many of which are minted on the Ethereum blockchain), that the Merge will tackle one of the biggest consumers is likely to go down well across the board.

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When Did the Ethereum Merge Happen? Is the Merge Complete?

• The Ethereum Merge took place on 15 September 2022 at block 15537351
• The Merge took years of planning, but as soon as the Ethereum blockchain hit the correct Total Terminal Difficult (TTD) of 58,750,000,000,000,000,000,000, the transition was instantaneous.
• There was no pause to boot up different software or load something else, the transition was automatic.

Overview

There are certain questions about the merge as how the users have reacted to the merge and has user behaviour changed.

We try to answer the following questions in this analysis looking at the following categories

• Overall Transactions
• Swaps
• NFT Sales

Methodology

• To get a comparative analysis we look at 50000 blocks both before and after the merge block 15537351
• We look at the data from ethereum.core.fact_transactions ,ethereum.core.ez_dex_swaps and ethereum.core.ez_nft_sales tables and compute various metrics to answer the questions above.
• Such as transactions frequency, swap frequency, NFT sales, etc.

Number of block before and after the merge can be updated via the parameter above

Swap Transactions

• Looking at the swap frequency there is not much uptick in the number of swaps after the merge.
  • The highest daily was around 100K, whereas we see a lot of days around 105K after the merge.
  • In total we saw 838K swaps in 50K blocks before the merge vs 738K transactions in 50K blocks after the merge.
• Looking at the number of swappers there is no change in the number of swappers after the merge as well.
  • It has been consistent around 45K swappers.
  • In total we saw 487K swappers in 50K blocks before the merge vs 414K swappers in 50K blocks after the merge.

NFT Sales

• Looking at the NFT sales there is a slight uptick in the number of sales after the merge.
  • The highest daily was around 50K, whereas we see a lot of days around 60K after the merge.
  • In total we saw 379K sales in 50K blocks before the merge vs 378K sales in 50K blocks after the merge.
• Looking at the number of buyers there is a slight uptick in the number of buyers after the merge as well.
  • The highest daily was around 23K, whereas we see a lot of days around 25K after the merge.
  • In total we saw 177K users in 50K blocks before the merge vs 164K users in 50K blocks after the merge.

Overall Transactions

• Looking at the transaction frequency there is a slight uptick in the number of transactions after the merge.
  • The highest daily was around 1.M, whereas we see a lot of days around 1.3M after the merge.
  • In total we saw 8.78M transactions in 50K blocks before the merge vs 8.46M transactions in 50K blocks after the merge.
• Looking at the number of users there is a slight uptick in the number of users after the merge as well.
  • The highest daily was around 380K, whereas we see a lot of days around 400K after the merge.
  • In total we saw 4.39M users in 50K blocks before the merge vs 4.26M users in 50K blocks after the merge.
• Ethereum Price however has seen a dip in price after the merge.

Conclusion

• Overall there is slight uptick in metrics like Number of transactions overall, swaps and NFT sales.
• However I don’t think it has much to do with the merge since it doesn’t change much things.