Ethereum will be “55% complete” after The Merge

Vitalik Buterin, the creator of Ethereum, said that ETH is not yet complete with The Merge. According to Buterin, Ethereum is in a “long and complicated transition” phase.

Buterin made his statements during the EthCC conference in Paris. During the event, Buterin discussed how Ethereum is undergoing several significant changes. According to him, these changes will end up improving the Ethereum system in the long run.

Buterin opened the 40-minute presentation by discussing Ethereum’s “long and complicated transition”. Furthermore, he added that the network was moving towards becoming “a more robust and powerful system”.

Buterin has divided the upcoming Ethereum changes into four phases. That is, after The Merge, there should be three more phases, the Surge, the Verge and the Purge.

The Merge

The Merge refers to the transition of the network from Proof-of-Work (PoW) to Proof-of-Stake (PoS) and is expected to launch in September.
Meanwhile, Surge refers to the addition of 64 shard chains that should reduce congestion on the main chain when distributing traffic.

Verge refers to the addition of stateless clients with the aim of making the network more decentralized. Finally, Purge involves removing historical data in an attempt to optimize the network.

In reference to The Merge, Buterin said that Ethereum would be about “55% complete” after the event. Another major protocol upgrade that Buterin highlighted was EIP-4444.

This is a proposal focused on storing historical data in execution clients. “Because people value scalability, you can’t trust us to store everything,” he said.

Finally, he also mentioned the EIP-1559, the fee-burning model that was introduced in August 2021.

“The EIP-1559 was amazing. It changed a lot, but it changed the way we think about transactions,” he said.