This is what the Ethereum Merge means for NFTs

The merge could go down in history as one of the biggest milestones in the blockchain world. The upgrade should make ETH transactions faster and cheaper. But that’s not all: the entire energy consumption of the second-largest blockchain network is also expected to fall by over 99 percent after the merger.

Most notably the Ethereum NFT sector, which keeps popping up even outside of the crypto bubble makes headlines, should benefit. In recent years, the NFT ecosystem has repeatedly been criticized as a climate killer.

As a result of the merge, the NFT sector will also become green – and thus this main argument of many NFT critics will be almost completely invalidated. Furthermore, assuming that NFTs will gain increasing acceptance over the next few decades, a nearly carbon-neutral blockchain like ETH could make some very energy-intensive processes in our society more efficient.

Examples are the maintenance of the banking system or the safekeeping of physical works of art or documents, as well as commodity and stock trading. These processes could be handled in a much more climate-friendly way via the Ethereum blockchain.

The merger allows Ethereum to realize its full economic and cultural potential. NFTs could form an alternative to the traditional financial system, allowing humanity to ship digital assets in a more energy-efficient manner.

This is what you need to know as an NFT holder before the Ethereum merge

There are also risks associated with the Ethereum Merge. This also has consequences for NFT owners. A possible fork (copy of the ETH blockchain before the merger) could cause part of the ETH community to migrate to an alternative blockchain that is still based on Proof of Work (PoW) (ETHPOW).

In other words: ETH miners copy the state of the “old” Ethereum PoW blockchain (tokens, NFTs, DeFi protocols, etc).

For NFT holders, however, this event is not a big deal. All NFTs are copied to possible PoW forks as well as to the ETH 2.0 Proof of Stake blockchain. Owners therefore do not have to take action themselves.