Cryptocurrency Exchange is FTX announced As the Ethereum merge nears, it will temporarily freeze trading of Ether (ETH) on multiple blockchains.
The halving will remain in place until the merger is complete, as a way of taking additional precautionary measures to protect investors’ funds during the Ethereum upgrade.
Following the merger, the Ethereum blockchain will gradually move from a Proof-of-Work (PoW) consensus mechanism to a Proof-of-Stake (PoS) consensus mechanism.
FTX said:
“As the ETH merger nears, FTX will temporarily disable the blockchain transfer of secondary chain ETH to ensure that settlement is clean; the main chain ETH will remain active for a longer period of time.”
FTX’s move comes despite assurances from Ethereum developers that Terminal Total Difficulty (TTD) is what will allow Merge to switch to PoS without downtime. TTD will enable the transition based on the total mining power that will go into creating the new chain.
Merger won’t bring down gas prices
Despite switching from PoW, which is considered more expensive, to PoS, which is considered cheaper, the Ethereum Foundation has stated that the merge will not reduce gas prices.
An announcement from the Ethereum Foundation read:
“Gas fees are a product of network demand relative to network capacity. Merge disallows the use of proof-of-work, converting to proof-of-stake for consensus, but does not significantly limit any such parameter. which directly affects network capacity or the whole.”