With good reason, the Ethereum Merge upgrade was highly anticipated. The Ethereum Merge was a highly anticipated upgrade that not only dramatically increased the amount of transactions the network could process, but also significantly reduced the energy usage of the network. The upgrade has resulted in Ethereum miners being a collateral injury as they no longer have to use their highly-specialized mining hardware. ETH miners had to look for alternatives.
The Great Exodus
Ethereum miners had lost their importance as one of the key components of the network in just one hour. Since the proof of work was replaced by proof of stake, it became unnecessary to use highly-sophisticated machines. The network uses validators to verify transactions.
After the Merge, Ethereum miners can no longer mine cryptocurrency. Instead they have switched to GPU-mineable tokens. The miners have fled the Ethereum network and moved to other networks like Ravencoin or Ethereum Classic.
Source: ETHUSD on TradingView.com| Source: ETHUSD on TradingView.com
Since it’s a fork from the original ETH network, Ethereum Classic is proving to be a great destination for miners. Ravencoin was a project of the Ravencoin team, which had worked hard to bring in ETH miners who have been displaced. Both networks have been captivated by this move, which has resulted in rapid growth.
Ravencoin Hashrate Soars and Ethereum Classic
Although it’s only been two hours since the Ethereum merger was complete, there have already been significant changes in the market. Both networks’ hashrates have soared as displaced ETH miners shift to other coins like Ethereum Classic or Ravencoin.
The hash rate across both networks has increased more than twice in the past 24 hours. Ethereum Classic already saw an acceleration in growth, since the Merge announcement. The total Ethereum Classic hash rate was around 52 TH/s Wednesday. However, by early Thursday morning, it had reached more than 100 TH/s.
Ravencoin is experiencing the same thing. Like Ethereum Classic, Ravencoin’s hashrate rose more than 100% from around 7.4 to 14 TH/s on Wednesday, and then topped at 14.8 to TH/s.
Despite this, the network is not sufficient to support the full mining power for ETH. Experts predict that GPU-mineable coins can only absorb 15% of the total ETH haveh rate before they cease to be profitable.
Featured image by Forkast. Chart from TradingView.com
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