Back in mid-July, one of the Ethereum Foundation developers Tim Beiko announced the approximate date of the transition to Ethereum 2.0, the merging of the Proof-of-Work and Proof-of-Stake chains, which is expected to happen in late September.
Subsequently, Vitalik Buterin, the father of Ethereum, validated his claims. He spoke about the upcoming merging of the Proof-of-Work and Proof-of-Stake chains at the Ethereum Community Conference (EthCC), which targeted developers. There he presented a roadmap, at the end of which Ethereum will be able to process 100,000 transactions per second.
The merging of the chains is referred to here as the first stage, The Merge. Its implementation will mean 55% of updates will be completed.
The other phases that will follow are called The Surge, The Verge, The Purge and The Splurge. The Surge will be characterized mainly by the addition of sharding, a technology that should increase the efficiency of Layer 2 protocols. It should also reduce network fees.
The Verge will bring storage optimization to Ethereum and reduce the size of nodes. A new Ethreum client should make it easier to create new layers on top of the main blockchain.
The Purge should reduce the demand on hard disk storage space for validators and reduce the likelihood of network clogging.
The Splurge should improve the cryptographic technologies that the Ethereum blockchain will use.
This news has a positive effect on the price of ether. According to market maker Cumberland, institutions are opening long positions in anticipation of Ethereum 2.0. Since the announcement of the merger of the PoW and PoS chains, the price of ether has climbed from $1,100 to $1,700.