Now that the Ethereum merger is behind us, what's next?

Ethereum has successfully completed its long-awaited transition from proof-of-work (PoW) to proof-of-stake (PoS) in a process known as a merger.

The plan took years to develop and went through a seemingly endless series of tests and tweaks. It finally happened after being one of the most anticipated and talked about events in the crypto world this year. But now the event has passed, with Ethereum appearing to overcome the technical hurdles presented by the transition.

"Ethereum now has a chance to be a productive, aligned, and forward-looking technology compared to one that was rooted in high and below-average energy consumption from a transaction or transaction perspective. costs," Sean Ford, acting CEO of blockchain Algorand (which is also PoS), told TechCrunch. "I'm optimistic about the chances of the industry."

While the merger was a huge achievement, there are many more upgrades planned for the Ethereum blockchain down the road. In July, Vitalik Buterin, co-founder of Ethereum, said that the network would undergo other updates that rhyme with the merger - Surge, Verge, Purge and Splurge.

“One of the beauties of the merger that we see is that Ethereum has a long technical roadmap, but it will never be complete,” Steven Goldfeder, co-founder and CEO of Offchain Labs (the developer of Layer 2 rollup Arbitrum), TechCrunch told TechCrunch. "There is never a time when we are done. Technology will only get better with time. We will continue to innovate and do better things."

But what does all of this really mean for the next era of the Ethereum network?