ETH2 "Merge" to Come in Aug. ETH/XTZ Rivalry Renewed?
The Ethereum Foundation announced a soft-deadline for the long-anticipated ETH2/Consensys/"Merge" - which will move ETH's current proof-of-work systems over to proof-of-stake.
DeFi and finance people tend to prefer PoS over PoW as an economic engine since it's more similar to how the banking industry operates. It also had the added benefit of being more secure, energy efficient, and easier to understand.
The ETH team may have been feeling the pressure to do the migration sooner than later due to high gas fees having chased a lot of the developers and artists in the ecosystem off the chain - but may have been bogged down by speculators and miners who did well during previous runs and don't want things to change. The migration to PoS this summer needs to be smooth and without incident if the coin wants to maintain its long-term lead.
But since they're dealing with legacy PoW systems that may or may not lead to complications down the line (on top of the politics of it all), we don't know how things will actually turn out. ETH's validator systems (XTZ has a similar system called "Baking") currently requires a massive 32 ETH investment - of which you have to sign a waiver agreeing that there is no definitive date where you might see your money back. In theory, post-merge the initial validators *should* be able to withdraw from the system but if this happens en-masse it could potentially spell a disaster for the project as a whole. A lot depends on how the ecosystem develops post-merge. (Though there is - to be fair - the potential for interest rates to shoot up in order to compensate for its loss.)
Another worry for ETH is what will happen to the price post-merge - in theory, the system itself will "burn" its money supply to keep prices high, but in crypto utility coins and speculation coins are often correlated in an inverse manner. The team reassures investors that their money is safe, but given the new and unprecedented nature of this "merge", there still are no guarantees.
In the meanwhile projects like Tezos (XTZ) - which has been proof-of-stake from the very beginning when it was proposed in 2014 - have been making moves both in the Web3 space and in the markets - one of the few coins this week that managed to remain in the green. It's also one of the chains that artists, developers, and businesses have flocked to after ETH's gas fees started becoming untenable, and we see signs that lesser known projects like these are starting to become more "viable" in recent months. Tezos' protocol was designed specifically for stability - it doesn't require hard-forks for upgrades, offers staking rewards (4.63% on Coinbase for merely holding it - ETH2 currently offers 3.675%), and has historically always had low gas fees, even during the craze of last year. Many people - especially in the arts and NFT spaces - have noticed and have migrated over. (e.g. https://teia.art, objkt.com.)
The two chains historically have always had a rivalry of sorts, back when Ethereum decided to go with PoW, whereas Tezos decided to go with PoS as its Layer-1 from the very beginning. Tezos has remained mostly quiet during the bull runs of the last few years, but as the merge date gets closer, we might start to see this old rivalry re-emerge again.
DeFi and finance people tend to prefer PoS over PoW as an economic engine since it's more similar to how the banking industry operates. It also had the added benefit of being more secure, energy efficient, and easier to understand.
The ETH team may have been feeling the pressure to do the migration sooner than later due to high gas fees having chased a lot of the developers and artists in the ecosystem off the chain - but may have been bogged down by speculators and miners who did well during previous runs and don't want things to change. The migration to PoS this summer needs to be smooth and without incident if the coin wants to maintain its long-term lead.
But since they're dealing with legacy PoW systems that may or may not lead to complications down the line (on top of the politics of it all), we don't know how things will actually turn out. ETH's validator systems (XTZ has a similar system called "Baking") currently requires a massive 32 ETH investment - of which you have to sign a waiver agreeing that there is no definitive date where you might see your money back. In theory, post-merge the initial validators *should* be able to withdraw from the system but if this happens en-masse it could potentially spell a disaster for the project as a whole. A lot depends on how the ecosystem develops post-merge. (Though there is - to be fair - the potential for interest rates to shoot up in order to compensate for its loss.)
Another worry for ETH is what will happen to the price post-merge - in theory, the system itself will "burn" its money supply to keep prices high, but in crypto utility coins and speculation coins are often correlated in an inverse manner. The team reassures investors that their money is safe, but given the new and unprecedented nature of this "merge", there still are no guarantees.
In the meanwhile projects like Tezos (XTZ) - which has been proof-of-stake from the very beginning when it was proposed in 2014 - have been making moves both in the Web3 space and in the markets - one of the few coins this week that managed to remain in the green. It's also one of the chains that artists, developers, and businesses have flocked to after ETH's gas fees started becoming untenable, and we see signs that lesser known projects like these are starting to become more "viable" in recent months. Tezos' protocol was designed specifically for stability - it doesn't require hard-forks for upgrades, offers staking rewards (4.63% on Coinbase for merely holding it - ETH2 currently offers 3.675%), and has historically always had low gas fees, even during the craze of last year. Many people - especially in the arts and NFT spaces - have noticed and have migrated over. (e.g. https://teia.art, objkt.com.)
The two chains historically have always had a rivalry of sorts, back when Ethereum decided to go with PoW, whereas Tezos decided to go with PoS as its Layer-1 from the very beginning. Tezos has remained mostly quiet during the bull runs of the last few years, but as the merge date gets closer, we might start to see this old rivalry re-emerge again.
