About Ethereum Merge

The Merge which happened on September 15th, was the joining of the original execution layer of Ethereum (the Mainnet that has existed since genesis) with its new proof-of-stake consensus layer, the Beacon Chain. It eliminated the need for energy-intensive mining and instead enabled the network to be secured using staked ETH. It was a truly exciting step in realizing the Ethereum vision—more scalability, security, and sustainability.

As a summary:

• 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%.

Methodology

In this open analytics dashboard, we’re gonna dive in 3 separate metrics to see what has changed ever since The Merge happened (September 15th). Using ethereum.core.fact_transactions , ethereum.core.fact_blocks

Metrics:

• Block time performance (daily average, total average, min and max both before and after the merge)

• Average TPB (Transactions Per Block), Average TPM (Transactions Per minute), Average TPS (Transactions Per Second) and Daily total Transactions

• Gas used (Daily average and cumulative average, average and cumulative average on whole, min and max both before and after merge)

• The date range are mostly from 45 days before up until now.

• All data analysis is based on Flipside Data

Observations: TPB, TPM, TPS, Daily TXN

• On the merge day (September 15th) and a couple of leading days we can see a big spike in the number of daily transactions, which is not very strange, a lot of users wanted to see what has changed. After that the daily number of txs are back to normal with a slight increasing trend.

• We have the same spike in Transaction Per Block for the first days of merge and then the TPB fell off.

• The plots look similar for TPS and TPM to the Daily TXN plot.

• The failed percentage of transactions doesn’t seem to be changed a lot, still in the range of ~3-6.5 for both minute and second scale.

Observations: Block Time

• Max block time and min block time are the same both before and after merge
• The total average block time is lower after the merge
• On daily basis, we can observe the spike on decreasing of average block time.

TPB, TPM, TPS, Daily TXN

BLOCK TIME

GAS

Observations: GAS

• Interestingly, though the average of Gas paid has been increasing almost since the merge, the cumulative average has been decreasing.
• The above observation is also true on cumulative total average.

Conclusions and Findings🔍

• The average block time has been decreasing ever since the merge, even though the successful number of transactions were increasing, and this could mean a better and faster performance on Ethereum Blockchain.

• The metrics on minute, second and daily scale are showing a slight gradual increasing trend for number of transactions.

• To my idea, the most promising part is the Gas. As the cumulative average Gas has been decreasing ever since the merge, we can finally be hopeful to see that our wishes about the merge are becoming true: Less energy consumption → lower gas fees