Decentral Block Post

It’s been less than a day since Ethereum’s historic transition to proof-of-stake, with most of the crypto community still abuzz with excitement following the successful Merge.

On Sept. 15 at 06:42:42 UTC, the last Ethereum block using the old proof-of-work consensus mechanism was mined. Replacing it is an energy-efficient proof-of-stake consensus mechanism.

Many crypto enthusiasts and climate advocates worldwide have been thrilled by the positive impact it will have on the environment and thus, crypto’s reputation.

Others have just been in awe of the technological feat of upgrading an entire blockchain network without any stoppages.

Uniswap Labs founder and CEO Hayden Adams told his 232,200 Twitter followers on Sept. 15 that the reduction of Ethereum’s energy usage “will improve the network's public image” more so than anything else in its “entire history.”

The Ethereum Merge has finally happened. It’s over, and fortunately it went smoothly without any major hiccups. As predicted by many, the event turned out to be a “buy the rumor sell the news” style event, or perhaps, the hotter-than-expected consumer price index print on Sept. 12 was the real catalyst that pushed the market in its current direction. 

Regardless of the reasons for this week’s downturn, the Merge is over and in its wake, bulls are left holding a whole lot of nothing. It’s likely that a new bullish narrative will need to emerge, or analysts will need to keep a close eye on smart money to see what assets they elect to rotate into.

Remember, “The Merge,” according to so many “smart” people, was meant to be a bullish event that would possibly send Ether price higher and the treasure trove of hardfork ETH POW tokens was meant to magically materialize multi-billions of dollars in liquidity which would likely inflow to Bitcoin and help the ailing asset to break out of its current range.

Well, none of that happened. It’s not to say that it won’t happen, but the current reality is a market painted in a bright shade of red. Bitcoin’s Sept.15 drop below $20,000, induced a market-wide correction resulting in double-digit losses for a majority of altcoins and at the moment, there isn’t an easily graspable story for investors to interpret as bullish.

Not everything is dumping

There does happen to be an outlier, and its name is Cosmos (ATOM). To the surprise of some, it’s one of the few green assets on the charts on Merge day. Currently, the altcoin reflects a 9.4% gain and it has rebounded strongly off its Sept.14 low at $13.19.

The Ethereum Merge has finally happened. It’s over, and fortunately it went smoothly without any major hiccups. As predicted by many, the event turned out to be a “buy the rumor sell the news” style event, or perhaps, the hotter-than-expected consumer price index print on Sept. 12 was the real catalyst that pushed the market in its current direction. 

Regardless of the reasons for this week’s downturn, the Merge is over and in its wake, bulls are left holding a whole lot of nothing. It’s likely that a new bullish narrative will need to emerge, or analysts will need to keep a close eye on smart money to see what assets they elect to rotate into.

Remember, “The Merge,” according to so many “smart” people, was meant to be a bullish event that would possibly send Ether price higher and the treasure trove of hardfork ETH POW tokens was meant to magically materialize multi-billions of dollars in liquidity which would likely inflow to Bitcoin and help the ailing asset to break out of its current range.

Well, none of that happened. It’s not to say that it won’t happen, but the current reality is a market painted in a bright shade of red. Bitcoin’s Sept.15 drop below $20,000, induced a market-wide correction resulting in double-digit losses for a majority of altcoins and at the moment, there isn’t an easily graspable story for investors to interpret as bullish.

Not everything is dumping

There does happen to be an outlier, and its name is Cosmos (ATOM). To the surprise of some, it’s one of the few green assets on the charts on Merge day. Currently, the altcoin reflects a 9.4% gain and it has rebounded strongly off its Sept.14 low at $13.19.

Zircon Finance, an automated market maker (AMM) and a decentralized exchange on Moonbeam, announced the launch of a mainnet network to address investor’s challenges related to impermanent loss in decentralized finance (DeFi).

Impermanent loss relates to a condition wherein investors lose assets they hadpreviously dedicated to providing liquidity to a liquidity pool for earning profits via yields. The mainnet network, dubbed Zircon Gamma, aims to counter such losses through single-sided liquidity over the Moonriver network, which tranches or splits risks between a volatile cryptocurrency and a stablecoin.

For example, in the case of an ETH/USDC pool, Zircon allows Ether (ETH) to maintain full exposure while ensuring safety through USD Coin (USDC) stablecoin. In addition, the mainnet allows both sides to earn swap fees.

As explained by Zircon, Float liquidity pools like ETH double their gains over regular pools but remain at the risk of impermanent loss. However, the AMM’s in-house Async LPing mechanism reduces the risk by at least 90%.

The mechanism does this by incentivizing liquidity pools to restock lost ETH funded via the earned fees. Speaking to Cointelegraph, Andrey Shevchenko, co-founder of Zircon, revealed that his inspiration to create such a system stems from the traders' need for a flexible and permissionless solution, stating:

In this week's episode of Market Talks, we welcome Dr. Julian Hosp, CEO and co-founder of Cake DeFi.

Dr. Julian Hosp is the CEO and co-Founder of Cake DeFi, a highly intuitive online platform dedicated to providing access to decentralized financial services. He is widely regarded as a leading influencer in the crypto and blockchain space with over one million followers across all of his channels globally. He is also a best-selling author and his vision is to bring blockchain awareness and understanding to a billion more people by 2025.

The Merge has been all over the place recently, with different news outlets, influencers and YouTube channels covering the event as much as possible, but why does the Ethereum Merge actually matter, and why is it such a significant event in crypto? We ask Julian to break it down for us.

Now that the Merge is finally complete and Ethereum has successfully moved from proof-of-work to proof-of-stack, what has actually changed? Will the network be any different for users or will it behave differently for day-to-day transactions? Also, what's next for Ethereum? Are there more upgrades or changes planned for the future? Will the Merge bring more institutional adoption now that the network is more environmentally friendly? 

After all the news and attention the merge got, a lot of people were expecting there to either be a huge pump or dump in the price of ETH and other cryptocurrencies. But the markets were largely unaffected by the event. This begs the question, was it all just hype? We get Julian's take on the matter.

Bitcoin (BTC) spent a second day threatening $20,000 support on Sep. 15 as markets processed the Ethereum (ETH) Merge.

BTC stuck between price magnets'

Data from Cointelegraph Markets Pro and TradingView showed BTC/USD spiking below $20,000 again overnight to recover marginally above the boundary for a brief period.

The largest cryptocurrency broadly failed to regain lost ground after surprise United States inflation data on Sep. 13 sent risk assets into a tailspin.

Down 13.5% versus the week’s top at the time of writing, Bitcoin offered little inspiration to traders who were still eyeing further losses.

“Bullish above or after a reclaim of $20,800 or something like this and maybe up,” popular trader Crypto Ed summarized in his latest YouTube update.

Bitcoin (BTC) spent a second day threatening $20,000 support on Sept. 15 as markets processed the Ethereum (ET Merge.

BTC stuck between price magnets'

Data from Cointelegraph Markets Pro and TradingView showed BTC/USD spiking below $20,000 again overnight to recover marginally above the boundary for a brief period.

The largest cryptocurrency broadly failed to regain lost ground after surprise United States inflation data on Sep. 13 sent risk assets into a tailspin.

Down 13.5% versus the week’s top at the time of writing, Bitcoin offered little inspiration to traders who were still eyeing further losses.

“Bullish above or after a reclaim of $20,800 or something like this and maybe up,” popular trader Crypto Ed summarized in his latest YouTube update.