Try Quests to earn cryptoFlash Bounty: Post Merge Behavior
Questions:
The merge has occurred.
- How have users responded in days that followed?
- Analyze any notable trends or outliers you can see since ETH switched to POS.
- Compare this to user behavior in the days and weeks leading up.
- What major changes can you see?
Solution:
Based on this The transition occurred at block 15537393 on September 15 at 1:42:42 a.m. EST.
To answer this question, I used ethereum.core.fact_blocks table. The approach I followed in this dashboard was to first have an overview of the blocks and the number of transactions in each block in two periods. one of them before block number 15537393 as before the Merge and another one after this block number as after the Merge.
Then I track swap activity on different platforms.
Then I compare the daily average value of metrics in two periods (before and after the Merge).
At the end we’ll go to the main question of this dashboard, that is, what is the reaction of users to the Merge? what’s the main change?
What was The Merge?
The Merge was the joining of the original execution layer of Ethereum (the Mainnet that has existed since genesis) with its new proof-of-stake consensus layer, the Beacon Chain. It eliminated the need for energy-intensive mining and instead enabled the the network to be secured using staked ETH. It was a truly exciting step in realizing the Ethereum vision—more scalability, security, and sustainability.
Initially, the Beacon Chain shipped separately from Mainnet. Ethereum Mainnet - with all it's accounts, balances, smart contracts, and blockchain state - continued to be secured by proof-of-work, even while the Beacon Chain ran in parallel using proof-of-stake. The Merge was when these two systems finally came together, and proof-of-work was permanently replaced by proof-of-stake.
Imagine Ethereum is a spaceship that launched before it was quite ready for an interstellar voyage. With the Beacon Chain, the community built a new engine and a hardened hull. After significant testing, it became time to hot-swap the new engine for the old one mid-flight. This merged the new, more efficient engine into the existing ship enabling it to put in some serious lightyears and take on the universe.
After the merge, miners were no longer needed to secure the network, and so rig operators have to move their machines to other PoW blockchains.
After the merge, the only requirement is to hold and stake a certain amount of PoS digital tokens or coins in order to participate in the validation process instead of running crypto mining machines.
The above charts show the number of transactions, unique swappers, and swap volume on SushiSwap.
According to my analysis, the number of swap transactions increased, the number of unique swappers and the volume of swaps don’t have notable change after the merge on SushiSwap.
The above charts show the number of transactions, unique swappers, and swap volume on UniSwap.
According to my analysis, the number of swap transactions increased, the number of unique swappers doesn’t have notable change and the volume of swaps decreased after the merge on UniSwap.
The above charts show the number of transactions, unique swappers, and swap volume on Curve.
According to my analysis, the number of swap transactions increased, the number of unique swappers doesn’t have notable change and the volume of swaps decreased after the merge on Curve.
The above charts show the number of transactions, unique swappers, and swap volume on Balancer.
According to my analysis, the number of swap transactions and the number of unique swappers increased, and the volume of swaps decreased after the merge on Balancer.
The above charts show swaps activity on all previous DEXs that we showed separately. So the trend is more clear.
According to my analysis, the number of swap transactions increased, the number of unique swappers doesn’t have notable change and the volume of swaps decreased after the merge on Ethereum.
This chart shows the number of blocks since Sep 1st per day. I separate blocks before and after the merge.
As you can see, the number of blocks increased after the merge.
The daily number of blocks was around 5.8K before the merge, but after this event reached over 7K per day.
This chart shows the average number of transactions per block since Sep 1st per day. I separate blocks before and after the merge.
As you can see, the average number of transactions per block decreased after the merge.
The daily average number of transactions per block was around 180K before the merge, but after this event reached over 156K per day.
This chart shows the total number of transactions since Sep 1st per day. I separate blocks before and after the Merge.
As you can see, about 300,000 transactions per day were added to the three days after the merge but after that reached the previous amount again.
This chart shows the number of unique miners/validators since Sep 1st per day. I separate blocks before and after the merge.
This chart is one of the charts in this dashboard that shows changes between before and after the merge.
As you can see, the number of unique miners/validators has increased by about 10x after the merge.
These charts show the total fee and average fee per transaction since Sep 1st per day.
As you can see, we can’t say merge has been impacted on Ethereum fees.
Ethereum transaction fees are not expected to change as a result of the Merge. Future network updates, like danksharding and proto-danksharding, may help to address Ethereum's high network fees, but these updates are not expected until 2023 at the earliest.
This chart shows the number of unique transaction senders since Sep 1st per day. I separate blocks before and after the merge.
As you can see, there is a spike on the third day of the merge and the number of unique transaction senders from 442K reached to 566K.
This chart shows the number of unique transaction receivers since Sep 1st per day. I separate blocks before and after the merge.
As you can see, there is a spike on the second day of the merge and the number of unique transaction receivers from 259K reached to 319K.
Totally we can say the number of unique transaction receiver is decreased after the merge.
Here, I compare the average value of some metrics before and after the merge. For example number of blocks, the number of unique miners/validators, the total number of transactions per day, the number of transactions per block, the total fee, the average fee per transaction, and the number of unique transaction senders and receivers.
According to my analysis, the average value of some metrics is increased and some else is decreased.
For example, the total transactions per day, the number of unique transaction senders per day, the number of blocks per day, and the number of unique miners/validators per day increased although the number of transaction receivers per day, total fee per day, average fee per transaction, and the number of average transaction per block decreased after the merge.
Conclusion:
The total transactions per day, the number of unique transaction senders per day, the number of blocks per day, the number of unique miners/validators per day, and the number of swap transactions per day increased after the merge.
The number of unique swappers doesn’t have a notable change after the merge.
The number of transaction receivers per day, the total fees per day, the average fees per transaction, and the number of average transactions per block, and the volume of swaps decreased after the merge.