ether ETH/USD Creator Vitalik Buterin said he was “a bit surprised” that the network’s hashrate didn’t see a more significant drop in the weeks leading up to the merger.
What happened: In a Sept. 14 tweet, Buterin shared an image of the average hashrate of the Ethereum network, an indicator of the level of mining activity on the blockchain.
It looks like the thesis “hashrate will drop weeks before merger as miners rush to sell before everyone else” has been proven dead wrong.
I am a little bit surprised! I’ve argued against a 50% drop, but definitely expected 5-10%. pic.twitter.com/l9OpT8fPFl
— vitalik.eth (@VitalikButerin) September 14, 2022
“Looks like the ‘hashrate will drop weeks before merger because miners want to sell before everyone else’ thesis has been proven dead wrong,” Buterin said.
“I am a little bit surprised! I’ve argued against a 50% drop but definitely expected 5-10%.”
See also: WHY IS THE ETHERUM MERGER IMPORTANT?
Why it matters: Some market participants had predicted that ETH’s hashrate would drop significantly as the merge neared proof-of-stake. The assumption was based on miners losing interest in ETH mining and redirecting their resources to mining other proof-of-work currencies since mining on ETH would no longer be possible after the merger.
If ETH’s hashrate experienced a significant drop, the schedule of blocks produced on the network would likely have been disrupted. Since the merge is scheduled to go live at a certain block height, a potential drop in hashrate would likely have delayed the event based on the hashrate and network difficulty.
As the network hashrate has remained mostly intact, the Ethereum merge is expected to continue as planned later in the year early morning hours from 15 Sept
Price promotion: At press time, ETH is trading at $1,636, up 4.09% over the past 24 hours, according to data from Gasoline Pro.
