Ethereum merge: What you need to know

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New York
CNN Business
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The ethereum “merge” is giving crypto bulls something to cheer about.

Here’s the deal: It’s been a rough year for cryptocurrencies and their legions of fans. Bitcoin, by far the largest token, has fallen roughly 70% from its high nearly a year ago. Ditto the second-largest coin, ether, which runs on the ethereum blockchain.

But for months, the crypto faithful have been buzzing about a complex ethereum network software upgrade known as the “merge.”

In short, the merge would put the core infrastructure of ethereum on a more environmentally sustainable path, reducing its carbon footprint by 99%, according to the nonprofit behind the network. That’s the simple version, anyway — actually pulling it off took years of research and testing, and it wasn’t clear what would happen because, like so much in crypto-land, nothing like it had ever been done before.

So far, though, the merge appears to have been completed without a hitch.

Here’s what you need to know:

When you hear critics slamming crypto for sucking up as much energy as all of Argentina, say, or comparing bitcoin’s energy footprint to that of every refrigerator in America combined, they’re talking about the global community of computers required to verify transactions under the “proof-of-work” protocol.
Until now, both ethereum and bitcoin were running on proof-of-work, which requires high-powered computers to verify transactions and “mine” new coins across a decentralized global computer network.
(Ugh, I realize that still might sound like sci-fi, but the longer explanation would seriously put everyone to sleep. Let me just boil it down to this: proof-of-work = bad for…

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