1. INTRODUCTION

In this bounty it is aimed to investigate if the Ethereum blockchain merge from Proof-of-Work to Proof-of-Stake has had any effect on miners or not. To be specific, it is of great interest to find out if this merge made the miners stop mining or not. To this end, three metrics have been employed to explore if miners stopped mining or not. These metrics are daily number of blocks mined, daily number of blocks mined by top miners (will be discussed in next section) and daily number of unique miners. If any significant decrease in above mentioned parameters can be identified, it means that some miners have stopped working.

2. RESULTS

Figure 1 shows daily number of blocks mined by miners on Ethereum blockchain from the beginning of 2020. As depicted, there is no sharp change in daily number of blocks mined till March 17 (that is, six months ago). From early May, number of mined blocks decreased from about 6400 to 5300 till late June. Then sharply increased to previous level and remains unchanged in average. First of all, since there is just one significant change in daily number of blocks mined in last six months, here after, only last six months will be taken into consideration. Then, the decrease in the number of blocks mined in May 2022 cannot be attributed to Ethereum blockchain merge, since the number of blocks mined have again increased sharply to previous level. In brief, the daily number of blocks mined revealed that Ethereum merge has not affected the miners to change mining the blocks.

Although, total number of blocks mined in each day did not experience significant change, but may some top miners of the blockchain might stop mining the blocks. For this reason, top 20 miners who have mined the largest number of blocks were identified and then daily number of blocks mined by these top miners have been evaluated. This will show if top miners just work in beginning days of last six months or in recent weeks also worked to mine new blocks.

The daily number of blocks mined in last six months are demonstrated in figure 2. The results revealed that the overall trend of number of blocks mined by top 20 miners is similar to that of figure 1 and also, number of blocks mined in each day by top miners (around 6000 blocks per day) is very close to those shown in figure 1 (around 6400 blocks per day). This means that top miners are not affected by Ethereum merge and continued mining blocks as before.

Finally, daily number of unique miners were employed to investigate if some of miners have stopped working or not. The daily number of unique miners in last six months is displayed in figure 3. As the results show, there is no significant change in daily number of unique miners which again confirms Ethereum merge has not affected the miners. The sharp jump in number unique miners in September 15 is due to completeness of Ethereum merge from Proof-of-Work to Proof-of-Stake at this date.

3. CONCLUSION

In this dashboard, the effect of Ethereum merge from Proof-of-Work to Proof-of-Stake on miners has been studied to find out if the merge had any effect on miners to stop mining or not. There parameters were employed to investigate this issue. The following results summarize this study:

·       Daily number of blocks mined on Ethereum blockchain has no significant change from beginning of 2020 to March 17, 2022 (six months ago).

·       During last six months there is a gradual decrease in daily number of blocks and then a sharp increase to previous level. This change cannot be attributed to Ethereum merge.

·       Daily number of blocks mined by top miners are very similar to those mined by all miners in both trend and number. This confirms that miners continued mining the blocks as before.

·       Daily number of unique miners in last six months has no significant change. This metric again shows that merge has not affected the miners.

·       The sharp increase in number unique miners in September 15, is after Ethereum merge from Proof-of-Work to Proof-of-Stake.

In brief, the findings of this study revealed that Ethereum merge did not lead miners to change their mind about the mining the blocks.