On the 15th of September at around 7:42 AM London time, the Ethereum blockchain completed its long awaited ‘merge’ with the Proof of Stake (PoS) Beacon Chain, bringing an end to the Proof of Work (PoW) era for the second largest cryptocurrency.
So far, the performance of the new consensus mechanism has been generally good, with the miss rate of block validation staying relatively low. There is some ongoing concern about the lack of decentralisation since the merge, with LIDO and the major exchanges managing over half of active validators, and we will continue to monitor this as the ecosystem develops.
The deposit rate and total ETH locked since the merge has seen an uplift over the past week as confidence has increased.
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The block production time is stable at or above the new target time of 12 seconds. However, many dApps are still to update their assumed block times from 15 seconds, so rewards and interest will be accruing at a faster rate than shown on the dApp websites.
Migration and PoS security
We spent several months monitoring and preparing the Haruko node stack in readiness for the merge to ensure a seamless migration for Ethereum and its dependent chains. The network no longer has the security guarantees of PoW, so the importance of running verified and secure consensus components is essential.
At Haruko, we run and manage our own execution and consensus layer components that are synchronised and verified from the genesis block.
Without trust in the consensus source, users are at risk from spoofing and manipulated blockchain state, and with the proliferation of Ethereum-based side chains, integrity of the parent chain is more important than ever.
Get in touch today
Whether you're already using Haruko or interested in finding out more, our team is always happy to help.
Reach out today by replying to this email or fill out our form and we'll be in touch shortly.
All the best,
Team Haruko
