Bounty Question: The Merge has come and gone — what will be the next story, trend, or outlier to dominate the ETH space? Identify at least 3 developing trends or events that could have a large impact on Ethereum between now and the end of this year. Back up your assertions with data and visualizations.

Introduction

Before we start, let's read Vitalik Buterin's talk together, where he wants you to know that Ethereum is just 40% complete—and there's plenty more coming after the "Merge."

> At the Ethereum Community Conference in France , the Ethereum co-founder shared his vision for future developments well beyond the network’s move to proof of stake. In fact, the move often referred to as “The Merge,” because it will combine the Ethereum mainnet with the proof-of-stake beacon chain is just the first in a series of planned upgrades. > > And, to top it all off, Buterin has even given each of those planned upgrades rhyming names. Seriously. After the Merge, Ethereum will then undergo further upgrades which he calls the “Surge,” “Verge,” “Purge,” and “Splurge,” he told the conference. While it might sound like the title of a “Rick and Morty” episode, the surge, verge, purge, and splurge are actually key parts of Ethereum’s scaling, cleanup, and evolution, Buterin said. Bitcoin advocates consider Bitcoin to be 80% complete, Buterin argued, but said Ethereum supporters believe Ethereum is just 40% complete. After the merge, which is expected to be completed this September, Ethereum will still only be roughly 55% complete, he said. > >
> Buterin cited a desire to make Ethereum a more powerful and robust network as the reason behind the planned “deep changes.” The Surge refers to the addition of Ethereum sharding, a scaling solution which the Ethereum Foundation claims will further enable cheap layer-2 blockchains, lower the cost of rollups or bundled transactions, and make it easier for users to operate nodes that secure the Ethereum network. Buterin also said that once the surge is complete, the Ethereum network will process transactions faster as well. “Ethereum today can process about 15-20 transactions a second. This Ethereum including the rollups, including the sharding [...] it’s going to be able to process 100,000 transactions a second,” Buterin said. > >
> The Verge will implement what Buterin calls “Verkle trees” (a type of mathematical proof) and “stateless clients.” These technical upgrades will allow users to become network validators without having to store extensive amounts of data on their machines. In a proof-of-stake network, validators with locked-up or “staked” ETH confirm and verify transactions. In Buterin’s view, the verge will be “great for decentralization.”

> The Purge while its name evokes the 2013 horror movie where one night a year, all crime is legal will involve a purge of old network history (not people). > > “The purge: trying to actually cut down the amount of space you have to have on your hard drive, trying to simplify the Ethereum protocol over time and not requiring nodes to store history,” Buterin said of the phase.

> And The Splurge?

> It’s “all of the other fun stuff.”

> The outstanding performance of the Ethereum network in successfully carrying out a major change such as Merge and the fascinating interview of Vitalik Buterin about the future of the Ethereum network, promise very bright days for this network. Like the path that led to Merge, many small and large upgrades will be made on the Ethereum network in the future, which will have large and small impacts on the growth and development of the network. One of the upgrades that will happen soon is the Shanghai upgrade.

What is the Shanghai Upgrade?

> Once the Ethereum Merge has been deployed, the network will yet again undergo another update - the Ethereum Shanghai upgrade. As laid out by developer Tim Beiko, the Shanghai version addresses three critical issues surrounding Ethereum. It introduces changes in the EVM object format, Beacon Chain withdrawals, and L2 fee reduction. The Shanghai update introduces EIP-3540, also known as the EVM object format. The core element of this update is that it will separate the code from the data. This could be extremely beneficial for the on-chain validators. Alongside the separation, EIP-3540 introduces a new contract code section that helps in tackling and resolving complex features such as Account Abstraction, control flow in EVM, and EIP-3074. > > The Shanghai update also addresses the Beacon chain withdrawal delay. Current Ethereum stakers cannot withdraw their deposited ETH, but this should be resolved through the Shanghai upgrade. Finally, the Ethereum Shanghai update addresses the most wanted concern of the ETH community. It introduces changes that will effectively lower the notorious gas prices of Ethereum. The changes will be made by equalizing the block sizes and increasing the CALLDATA functionality of the block. The Ethereum Shanghai upgrade is expected to take place in early 2023.

❗❗❗ Methodology ❗❗❗

> Due to the nature of the change that Merge brought to the Ethereum network, two categories of users were affected: > > * Block Producers > * Stakers > > For this reason, parameters related to these two categories were obtained and compared in order to provide an opinion about the future of the Ethereum network after Merge.

Question:

Which of the 15 evaluated parameters was higher in the post-Merge period compared to the pre-Merge period?

> > 1. Number of Miners > 2. Average Miners per Day > 3. Number of Blocks > 4. Number of Users > 5. Average Blocks per Day > 6. Average Users per Day > 7. Number of Transactions > 8. Average Transactions per Day

> * Due to the nature of Merge and its goals, the direct parameters that are targeted are primarily related to miners. After block number 15537394, Ethereum network experienced a big change forever. Moving from PoW consensus to PoS consensus for many reasons including much, much lower energy consumption. The end of the story of PoW means the end of the story of miners. Miners have been affected by this fundamental change more than any other user. On the other hand, with the implementation of the proof-of-stake consensus, now the stakers are supposed to bear the main burden of the network blocks and receive rewards, so it is natural that the stakers have changed their procedure after Merge. For this reason, after general checks on the Ethereum network, it was the turn of the stickers to evaluate them and their behavior before and after Merge.

> * What is clear from these pie charts is that there is a very significant difference in the comparison of the number of before and after the Merge. The biggest impact of Merge can be seen on the Block Producers (which due to the nature of Merge, it was completely expected that there would be significant differences in the behavior and number of Block Producers, which has happened).

> * The higher total number of unique users and the higher average daily number of unique users in the 17 days before and 17 days after Merge are also interesting. In the daily charts of these parameters, it is better determined whether these increases were in the form of an upward trend or were at times and ended.

> * In the 15 days leading up to Merge, each miner produced an average of 1392 blocks. While block producers have produced an average of 40 blocks in the post-Merge period. This is one of the obvious results of Merge

> * Before the Merge, an average of 4.23 miners participated in the production of blocks per day, but after the Merge, this number has increased to 171.4 block producers. Another result of Merge

References

> * Merge Inroduction and Image > * Liquid Staking Image > * Inspired by Ali3N#85's dashboard on Liquid Staking section.

Conclusion

> - [ ] The Shanghai upgrade is the closest upgrade that I think is supposed to complement Merge. The possibility of direct withdrawal of deposited ETH is provided and it creates changes that may lead to a reduction of transaction fees. But big changes are coming: "Surge," "Verge," "Purge," and "Splurge." > >

> - [ ] Increasing the number of block producers > >

> - [ ] Increasing the number of daily blocks > >

> - [ ] Increase all parameters related to ETH staking > >

> - [ ] Reducing the number of transactions performed in the blocks of each block producer (which is a positive result)

Findings

> * Everything indicates that after the Merge, the parameters related to ETH staking (the number of stakes, the number of stakers and the amount of ETH staked) have all grown a lot in the post-Merge period. > * Although in the daily reviews section, there are several fluctuations in the post-Merge period, but the point here is that with all these fluctuations, the situation is generally different from before the Merger and we see a clear growth. The status of stakes in the future can be more interesting than this. In my opinion, this trend will take an upward trend along with the volatility of these short days after Merge. > * The noteworthy point here is that the increase percentage of sticklers has been higher than the other two parameters. That is, more stakers tended to stake ETH, even if the number of stakes they staked was low and the amount of ETH staked by them was less. The graphs show that the amount of ETH staked has not grown as much as the other two parameters. > > \

Findings

> ⬅ The number of unique block producers in the post-Merge period has increased by at least 8 times compared to before. Although the trend has been down in recent days, there are still 377 unique producers on the weakest day, while there were only 55 miners on the best day of the pre-Merge interval. This means 6.85 times.

> ⬅ The number of blocks also increased by at least 20% in the post-Merge period compared to before. The trend of the number of blocks has been constant. The number of daily blocks does not seem to be less than this, and it is highly probable that they can be expected to increase.

> ⬅ The number of daily transactions has also had a relatively upward trend. But the question is, can this trend maintain its upward trend? We need more time to answer this question.

> ⬅ The average number of transactions per block has decreased after Merge. But the amount of this decrease and the current trend is not such that one can be sure of its sustainability.

> ⬅ What we see in this chart and the chart below it is one of the results of Merge. The sharp increase in the number of block producers and the average number of fewer blocks per producer leads to a sharp decrease in the number of transactions performed in the blocks of each block producer. This trend is likely to be permanent and even less with the increase in the number of manufacturers.

> ⬅ The number of daily users has had a relatively upward trend as well as the number of daily transactions. But to what extent this trend can be related to Merge is a question for which there is no clear answer.

> ⬅ One of the prominent rumors about Merge was that it was supposed to lead to lower transaction fees. But this was never one of Merge's goals. As it can be seen, although the transaction fee has decreased sharply in the first days after the completion of the Merge, the transaction fee trend is returning to what it was before the Merge.

> ⬅ Interestingly, there is a great similarity between the pre- and post-Merge trends regarding the average number of transactions per user. It seems that the increase in the number of transactions that was accompanied by the increase in the number of users has been completely neutralized here.