📜 Background

Ethereum merge

The Merge was the joining of the original execution layer of Ethereum (the Mainnet that has existed since genesis) with its new proof-of-stake consensus layer, the Beacon Chain. It eliminated the need for energy-intensive mining and instead enabled the network to be secured using staked ETH.

> ==the merge took place on 15th September 2022.==

The Beacon Chain

is the coordination mechanism of the new network, responsible for creating new blocks, making sure those new blocks are valid, and rewarding validators with ETH for keeping the network secure.

The Beacon Chain was the name of the original proof-of-stake blockchain that was launched in 2020. It was created to ensure the proof-of-stake consensus logic was sound and sustainable before enabling it on Ethereum Mainnet. Therefore, it ran alongside the original proof-of-work Ethereum. Switching off proof-of-work and switching on proof-of-stake on Ethereum required instructing the Beacon Chain to accept transactions from the original Ethereum chain, bundle them into blocks and then organize them into a blockchain using a proof-of-stake based consensus mechanism. At the same moment, the original Ethereum clients turned off their mining, block propagation and consensus logic, handing that all over to the Beacon Chain. This event was known as The Merge. Once The Merge happened, there were no longer two blockchains; there was just one proof-of-stake Ethereum chain.

🤔 Approach

Dashboard sections

• Produced Blocks on Beacon Chain
• Validators and deposits
• Attester and Attestations

Methodology

In order to answer the bounty question and To conduct our study, we are using the new Flipside schema (Ethereum.Beacon_Chain). We are going to analyze the decentralization of the PoS network as well as the slashing of proposers and attesters since The Merge update.

Study Period

We have been using all the available data since the merge date.

👀Findings

The results of this dashboard showed:

Since The Merge update (15th September) till our analysis (9 November), There are more than 398k produced blocks on the Beacon Chain and Avg number of produced blocks on the Beacon Chain is about 7110 blocks per day. also, Since The Merge update, the total number of registered validators on the chain is about 34.5k.

the number of new validators is increasing on Beacon Chain over time. This means that Ethereum is becoming more and more decentralized over time since the network power is being distributed among the increasing number of validators. The results also showed The average deposited volume is 29.8ETH. The total amount of deposits since the merger is 1.099M ETH. The minimum amount of deposit is 1ETH and the maximum amount of deposit is 32ETH. 99.3% of validators have deposited 32 ETH (35035 thousand validations). There is a direct relationship between active validations and the number of deposits. There are not any slashed proposers on Ethereum’s beacon chain since the Merge event.

There are only 23 blocks that have experienced slashed Attesters.

👩‍💻 Author

Gmail: ftmkhodabande@gmail.com

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> Special thanks to my friend camp#4286

Produced Blocks on Beacon Chain

Attester and Attestations

Validators and deposits

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• Since The Merge update (15th September) till our analysis (9 November), There are more than 398k produced blocks on the Beacon Chain.
• Avg number of produced blocks on Beacon Chain is about 7110 blocks per day.
• Except15th September we can see there is almost a constant number of produced blocks on each day over time. (which means The cumulative line's Slope is constant and positive)

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• Since The Merge update, the total number of registered validators on the chain is about 34.5k.
• As we see on the right chart, the number of new validators is increasing on Beacon Chain over time. This means that Ethereum is becoming more and more decentralized over time since the network power is being distributed among the increasing number of validators.
• The pink line is the 7-day moving average. The maximum number of 7-day MA is 1119 on November 1st.

The average deposited volume is 29.8ETH. The total amount of deposits since the merger is 1.099M ETH. The minimum amount of deposit is 1ETH and the maximum amount of deposit is 32ETH.

You can see the daily changes in the deposit volume since the merger in the charts. The green line is the 7-day moving average chart. The graph shows that in the second half of October, the volume of daily deposits increased. Also, the maximum seven-day average in the chart is on November 1 with 35,833 thousand.

The distribution chart of Validators per deposited amount shows that 99.3% have deposited 32ETH (35035 thousand Validators).

The relationship between active validators and the number of deposits shows that as the number of active validators increased, so did the number of deposits.

The proposer_slashings and attester_slashings columns in ethereum.beacon_chain.fact_blocks table shows the data for the blocks which had experienced slashing.

It is important to bear in mind that this explicit penalty — slashing — did not exist for miners on POW Ethereum.

In other words, miners only needed to contend with opportunity cost as a deterrence to attack the network. The point is that, regardless of level, diversity on a post-Merge Ethereum is difference in kind from what it was pre-Merge.

According to these four charts:

• There are not any slashed proposers on Ethereum’s beacon chain since the Merge event.
• There are only 23 blocks that have experienced slashed Attesters. this number is way too low compared to the other 393k blocks that have not experienced any slashings.
• The maximum number of blocks that have experienced slashed Attesters was on 23rd September (16 blocks)
• The maximum deposits that have experienced slashed Attesters have been about 4.2.

the correlation of Slots number vs Attestations over time which is quite positive.

On September 15, we had a very significant increase in the number of Attestations. The number of SLOTS increased from 5 thousand to 7 thousand on September 15 and has been a steady trend since then. The blue line shows that the number of targets did not fluctuate much and fluctuated between 954 and 1551 over time. Except for September 15, when the number of validators is 167, it is 226 or 227 on other dates.