Ethereum Merge

• Ethereum Mainnet uses proof-of-stake, but this wasn't always the case.

• The upgrade from the original proof-of-work mechanism to proof-of-stake was called The Merge.

• The Merge refers to the original Ethereum Mainnet merging with a separate proof-of-stake blockchain called the Beacon Chain, now existing as one chain.

• The Merge reduced Ethereum's energy consumption by ~99.95%.

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The Merge didn't have a hard date and time it would finally occur. Here's why: each block on Ethereum’s PoW network carries a difficulty number representing how hard miners must work to add it to the network. Instead of kicking in at a specific date, the Merge was scheduled to take effect once the cumulative difficulty of all mined Ethereum blocks hits a certain number – the “total terminal difficulty” (TTD).

Methodology

In this dashboard, we’re gonna dive in Ethereum merge, mostly focusing on selling, buying and transferring $ETH trends. We want to realize that whether the Ethereum merge was a selling event or not? How miners were behaving and whether they had a big role in whatever happened through the merge event or not.

I start this analysis by taking a look at $ETH price, over the course of last month, 2 weeks before merge and 2 weeks right after it. (as the merge happened on ==September 15th==, on the ==block number = 15537351==)

Then I will go for analyzing some metrics.

Metrics:

• Total daily Amount of ETH transferred by miners (ETH and USD amount, before and after merge)
• Daily ETH amount transferred to CEXs by miners (before and after merge)
• Daily ETH amount transferred to CEXs by other users (before and after merge)
• ETH transferred to CEXs by miners and other users - categorized (before and after merge)
• Sending to and Receiving ETH from CEXs for both miners and other users (before and after merge)
• Swap other tokens to ETH (Buy ETH) from DEXs (before and after merge)
• Swap ETH to other tokens (Sell ETH) to DEXs (before and after merge)
• Top ETH transferring miner wallets - after merge
• Top ETH transferring user wallets - after merge

Findings and Conclusion

• Over the course of September, the amount of $ETH transferred by miners wallets have been decreasing and it could mean less sell pressure from miners.
• The other users (not miners) sent a big amount of $ETH to CEXs one day before merge, they were getting themselves ready to sell off if the merge wasn’t successful.
• If we want to compare miners and other users in case of volume they have transferred before and after the merge, the miners volume is so tiny and can be ignored.
• The above sentence is also true when it comes to comparing both sending and receiving $ETH from CEXs.
• Users have sent about 2M ==less== $ETH to CEXs after the merge. (probably Less desire to sell)
• While there isn’t a specific trend in swapping other tokens to ETH volume on September, we can see a huge volume on swapping ETH to other tokens AKA selling (==~5.6M==), on one day after the merge (September 16th) on DEXs. The drop on the $ETH price is also visible on the date.
• All and all, miners have sent the largest portion of their transfers to CEX and Defi(DEX) wallets.
• And last but not least, I believe that the volume that miners were playing with in the merge event, didn’t have a specific impact in comparison with other users, stakers, etc. but if we want to say what they were doing, we can say they were mostly trying to sell.