Unchained - Why Ethereum's Merge Was Delayed and Why It Won't Reduce Gas Fees Much - Ep.341

Starting point is 00:00:00 Hi, everyone. Welcome to Unchained. You're no-hype resource for all things Crypto. I'm your host, Laura Shin, author of The Cryptopians. I started covering crypto six years ago, and as the senior editor at Forbes, was the first mainstream media reporter to cover cryptocurrency full-time. This is the April 15th, 2022 episode of Unchained. With the Crypto.com app, you can buy, earn, and spend crypto in one place. Download and get $25 with the code Laura, link in the description. Galaxis. Create unstoppable communities by issuing NFTs with interactive dynamic utility traits that allow any creator to engage with, reward, and monetize their following.

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Starting point is 00:01:29 Download the On Juno app today. Today's guest is Tim Beko, Ethereum Foundation Coordinator for Core Developer Calls. Welcome, Tim. Hi, Dura. Thanks for having me. You announced this week that Ethereum's long-awaited merge would not happen in June as was previously projected. Before we dive into the details on that, to just catch any listeners up to speed, Explain what the merge is and then tell us how long it will be delayed and why. Sure.

Starting point is 00:02:01 So to start with the first part, right, like what is the Ethereum merge? So today, Ethereum basically has two chains running in parallel. One of those is a proof-of-work chain, which uses mining just like Bitcoin to generate new blocks on the network. And this is the chain that most end users interacting with Ethereum would kind of know it as Ethereum. This is where smart contracts get deployed, where most of users' funds sit. Previously, we would call this Ethereum 1. We've tried to move away from that. In parallel to that, we've also launched in December 2020 a proof-of-stake chain.

Starting point is 00:02:36 So proof-of-stakes since the very beginning of Ethereum was on the roadmap, we always knew we wanted to switch from proof-of-work to proof-of-stake, and it just took a ton of word to get to something which we thought was secure and decentralized enough for Ethereum. So we even when we had that, to be sure that we would not kind of break the network and all the applications that are running, instead of just switching directly, we decided to launch a chain in parallel. And so since December 2020, that proof of stake chain has been running and now has tens of billions of dollars kind of securing it, and basically runs the entire proof of stake algorithm, but the blocks don't contain any end user transactions. So all the blocks on this proof of stake chain, they contain some metadata around proof of stake,

Starting point is 00:03:20 and the consensus algorithm itself, but they don't run end-user transactions. And so the idea with the merge is that to move Ethereum from Proof-of-Work to Proof-State, we're going to keep the current chain which has all of the applications, which we call the execution layer now, and basically change the rules by which it decides

Starting point is 00:03:41 how to create a new block in the chain, to go from Proof-Work to following the beacon chain. And what happens in practice is, you know, we set a total difficulty value, which we can dive into later. Once we hit the certain mining difficulty on the network, the current execution change basically stops listening to proof of work, and instead we'll start looking at the proof of stake chain to tell it, what is the next block?

Starting point is 00:04:07 And from that point, from like the proof of stake perspective, validators will be producing blocks, which now include transactions from end users and smart contracts. And this whole process is basically, going to be instantaneous from like the Ethereum chain's perspective. So you'll have like the last proof of work block and then the next block gets produced by a validator on the beacon chain and we just continue that way. So it's been kind of years of work, but now we have a design which will be kind of seamless from a smart contract perspective for the transition.

Starting point is 00:04:39 And so most people thought, and this wasn't official, but most people expected it to happen in June, but you tweeted that it will probably happen in the months after. So why is that? Right. So we never had like an official date for the merge. And I appreciate, you know, that we've been saying it's soon for many years. And the community is very eager to see this happen. And the reason why we don't have a date is just fundamentally it's impossible to predict these things because there's so many unknown unknowns, right?

Starting point is 00:05:09 Like nobody has done this ever. And so at best what we can say is like look at how well things are going. and kind of projecting the future, but that assumes we don't hit some unknown issue, which we kind of always end up doing because this technology is so new that there's so many moving parts. So we try to shy away from giving dates,

Starting point is 00:05:31 but then there's always some pressure for like when is this roughly coming. And within Ethereum, this difficulty bomb, so this feature that means we need to upgrade the chain every so often, otherwise the chain stops working, and this will start kicking off around June. So when we get to June, we basically have to make a decision around, you know, are we ready to move Ethereum to proof of stake or do we want to push this back back again? And so obviously,

Starting point is 00:05:59 no one on the development side wants to move forward with the merge if it's not ready and if it's not safe for the network. So if we did get the June and it's, you know, we're not ready, then we'll just push back the bomb and make sure that that we are in a spot. that we're comfortable with before we go to main net. And I guess the thing that's also worth noting is this difficulty bomb is kind of a gradual process. So it doesn't make the network unusable overnight. It slowly gets worse.

Starting point is 00:06:30 And then it's an exponential curve. So at some point it gets much worse, much quicker. So we kind of have this range between June and like probably late July, early August, where you might see longer block times on Ethereum. And if we thought that we were just ready, we might choose to not push back the bomb and have longer block times for a month or two. And I think this is kind of where we're at right now.

Starting point is 00:06:53 Like we are pretty far along in the development process. We're starting to think about deploying this to main net, but we're definitely not at the point where, you know, it is completely bug-free and there's no more issues and it's a no-brainer than just deploy the mainnet. So we're kind of in this middle section where, you know, we might have to delay the bomb. there's a chance we might not, and we're obviously watching and testing very closely

Starting point is 00:07:20 to see exactly what to do. So what needs to happen or what needs to be in place for Ethereum to feel comfortable actually executing the merge? Right, that's a great question. And historically, you know, what we've done when we have upgrades is, we'll write all these EIPs into clients, we'll run a bunch of tests for them,

Starting point is 00:07:41 we'll sometimes deploy a couple new test nets to test them, and then we'll move to the existing test nets on Ethereum. So like Rinkeby, Gordy, Robson, and whatnot. The thing that's happened over the years, though, is, like, these test nets now have a lot of usage. So, like, Ethereum's test nets have as much usage as some, like, actual layer one blockchains. Like Reddit, for example, has a ton of its infrastructure on one of the test nets. And so we don't want to break these if we don't have to. So we've kind of introduced a new step in the process, which we've called ShadowFor

Starting point is 00:08:13 And what shadow forking does is we basically launch an upgrade on an existing network, but only using a very small number of nodes that basically the testing teams and client development teams control. And what happens then is, you know, these nodes will fork off when the block is hit, but there'll only be a small number of nodes and they'll still be able to replay all of the transactions from the main network. And that gives us kind of a way to test as though we were forking testing. test nets, but without bringing the whole thing down if there are errors. So we've been running through this process. We first ran through it on Gordy.

Starting point is 00:08:52 This week, or late last week or early this week, we had the first run on a main net shadow fork as well. And so we've basically those forks have been successful in that we've managed to get the network to finalize after. But the thing to note there is like the way the proof of stake algorithm is done is it's meant to be resilient to a lot of things going wrong. So that in case there's an attack on Ethereum or something like that, ideally the chain keeps chugging along. So even though these test nets have like shadow fork successfully and they keep finalizing on the other side,

Starting point is 00:09:27 we have noticed like a lot of issues with clients and a bunch of different edge cases and whatnot. And those are the things we're trying to fix now because I said this on Twitter yesterday, like yes, we could, you know, ship this tomorrow and like maybe the network wouldn't completely crash. But that's not like the level of certainty we want to have before we transition Ethereum, which just has a huge amount of value sitting on top of it.

Starting point is 00:09:53 So the next few weeks, maybe months for us, is really like running these shadow forks, making sure that we catch all the issues, we obviously fix them. And once that is stabilized, then we can start looking at just forking the existing test nets and making sure those work all right. And once that's done, then we would fork maintenance. Yeah. And just to make it clear for people, you know, obviously Ethereum is the second largest crypto, but as I heard some people discussing on CoinDesk, there are so many assets built on top of Ethereum as well.

Starting point is 00:10:23 So when you had of all that economic activity, I mean, it's huge. So that's, you know, when you're just trying to shift that all over to this new chain, that obviously is a delicate transition. All right. So in a moment, we're going to talk a little bit more about kind of like, you know, the specifics about how this will happen. But first, a week were from the sponsors who make this show possible. Join over 10 million people using crypto.com.

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Starting point is 00:12:40 Tim. So one thing that you kind of said a little bit earlier was that will not happen at a certain block, but rather at this difficulty number. And we have talked about the difficulty time bomb. But just can you talk a little bit about how that transition will happen? The difficulty bomb and the total difficulty are separate concepts, which they have similar names. But the way that that proof of work works is every block, there's like a specific difficulty that it takes to mine it. And when more people try to mine on the network, we raise. that difficulty so that the block time stays the same and blocks don't get mined too quickly. And similarly, when less people mine, we lower it so that it's easier to mine blocks

Starting point is 00:13:18 and blocks don't take too long. But we also keep track of what's the total amount of difficulty that's been mined on the entire chain. So this is basically the sum of every single block's difficulty since the Ethereum Genesis block. For the merge, instead of using just a block number, what we want to do is use a total difficulty value. So to say once the network hits this much difficulty on the proof of work chain, then we transition to proof of stake. And you mean for all time? Yes, exactly, for all time. And the reason for that is that difficulty is just costly to fake. Maybe an aside here is minors might not be happy

Starting point is 00:13:58 with the merge, right? Like at the very least, we can't assume they'll be happy with the merge. So we want something which is as hard as possible for them to fake and as independent as them for the for the process to happen. And so by using the total difficulty, you basically make it really hard to fake kind of a second merge chain because you would then need to like spend all these mining resources to create that chain. So it just gives us a bit more confidence than a block number, where if you use the block number, you could imagine a minor mining kind of a shadow fork, shadow fork is probably the wrong term because it's a real thing now, but a minor mining like a minority fork in secret for months. And then, you know, they might be able to hit that block.

Starting point is 00:14:38 because over time, the difficulty has lowered on their fork, and they can kind of reveal that right at the merge and mess things up because there's now two competing forks. So in order to avoid that, we just look at which fork actually has the greatest amount of proof of work. And once we hit kind of that threshold value, which we call the terminal total difficulty, then we kind of hand everything off to the proof of stake chain. And the thing that's kind of interesting here is like there might be different blocks, which hits this terminal total difficulty

Starting point is 00:15:09 because Ethereum has uncle blocks happening. So it might be possible that once we get to the mergers, two or maybe even five blocks that all show up at the same time, but the way it's designed, only the first block which hits or exceeds that terminal total difficulty is like a valid final proof of work block. And then the validator on the beacon chain who creates the net block gets to choose which of those valid blocks they see as the previous.

Starting point is 00:15:37 canonical block. And so just like today, how you can have like an uncle block on Ethereum, which just get orphaned by the chain, we have the same situation where maybe at the merge, you know, there's a handful of competing blocks, but then we just rely on the validator to choose that. And then, you know, the validator afterwards will, we'll point back to the block that the previous validator chose. And at that point, we're 100% relying on proof of stake and proof of work. And miners generally just don't influence the four choice rule for Ethereum.

Starting point is 00:16:07 So I know you're probably loath to put a projection out, but can you give some sort of timeline of when you think the merge now is most likely to happen? I'm not going to do that, like, unfortunately. If there's one thing you've learned this week, I will put an explicit thing. So I will say you did tweet probably in the months after Q2, which sort of implies to me Q3. Right. I think, you know, we are pretty far long in the process. We think, you know, we're almost there. There's always this unknown, unknown thing, right? Like, we could find something the day before, which is like some fatal flaw and have to delay everything for months because it's a hard thing to fix. So that's like the thing, you know, it's just very hard. I think, sure, if everything keeps going like it's going now, like, you know, clearly we won't hit June just because the reason we won't hit June is just the amount of time it takes to go on. test nets and then main net because we need to like, you know, choose when we forked, then put out those releases, give people the time to update their nodes, have the forks happen, make sure that they went well.

Starting point is 00:17:17 And just, you know, we're already mid-April. So just the amount of time if we decided like tomorrow that we're going for main net, it would take probably more than two months to like get from, you know, that decision to like it actually happens on main net. So that's why, you know, I was pretty confident saying like June is not going to happen. And I think we've kind of shared that in the first. pass on like all core devs. But like, yeah, sure.

Starting point is 00:17:39 If, you know, if things keep going well and like there are no more big issues that we find, then probably the months after June still seems reasonable, whether that's like one or four, like or five, like I don't want to make a call there. Like something really terrible would have to happen for it to be delayed like a year at this point. Like I don't know what could cause that, you know, like nothing like that we've ever encounter like on Ethereum. So it's just like, but it's just very hard to tell you, like, maybe we find some weird sync issues which take us two months to debug. Like that could happen,

Starting point is 00:18:16 but there's no way to know really. So there are some misconceptions out there about what will happen on Ethereum after the merge, particularly around weather and how gas prices might change. Can you clarify what it is that people should expect in terms of gas fees? Right. So in short, gas fees should basically stay the same. The merge doesn't really change the throughput of Ethereum. It does a tiny thing which blocks are now 13 seconds and they'll lower to 12 seconds. So you know, you get like 9% more throughput. And so in practice, if all things were perfectly stable, you would imagine fees go down by like 8, 9%. But there's so much volatility on Ethereum that's like, that's, you know, basically nothing. But scalability is like super important. And it is like the next thing we're kind of working on. So just for to give some context, you know,

Starting point is 00:19:09 the main way Ethereum thinks about scalability today is like through rollups. And those are already live, right? Like there's optimistic rollups live. There's zero knowledge rollups that are going live as well. And these today already provide way lower fees than the Ethereum mainnet for end users. And a large part of what what users pay for when they pay a transaction. fee on rollups is storing data back on layer one. So the way that rollups work is that they generate all this transaction data, just like

Starting point is 00:19:37 the Ethereum main net. But instead of executing every transaction on layer one, they execute them all on layer two, but they then need to post back the transaction data on layer one because if something goes wrong, they need to then be able to execute it. And this is for optimistic rollups, zero knowledge roll-up work a bit differently because they don't pose the full data, they post back proof. But the general concept that users on L2 pay for posting data back to Ethereum L1, that's true across zero knowledge and optimistic roll-ups.

Starting point is 00:20:09 And so one big thing we can do to lower transaction fees on roll-up is just make it cheaper to put data back on Ethereum layer one. And so the long-term roadmap for that is a full sharding infrastructure, and sharding is basically a whole separate kind of data network on Ethereum that runs in parallel to smart contracts, which is just a whole-term. stores data for a limited period of time so that roll-ups can just use that as a way to post the data back. It's a bit complicated to ship all that and the fees are high today, so we want to do some things quicker. We basically have two short-term things that we're working on. One is just

Starting point is 00:20:45 straight up reducing the cost of storing data on layer one. The challenge by doing that is that it does grow the rate at which like an Ethereum node will grow. So if we make it cheaper to store data, then more data gets stored, and so the blockchain grows quicker. And we think, you know, we're probably at the point where it might make sense to do something like that if we really have to because the fees have gotten so high.

Starting point is 00:21:11 The other thing that we're working on, which we hope we can get done, is EIP 4844. And this is kind of an in-between where it doesn't do the full-sharting infrastructure, but it basically creates a new type of transaction on Ethereum, which has a little bit of shard data on it. And then roll-ups can just use these new types of transactions

Starting point is 00:21:34 to store kind of data for a cheaper price than they currently can. And the thing that's neat with that is that it would lay from like an application perspective's point of view all of the infrastructure that we're going to have in sharding. So it's like we can do this thing which doesn't provide full shardin yet, but it gives them kind of all the scaffolding that'll be there when sharding is. so that if, like, say, optimism or Starware or Arbitrump need to update to use this, they won't have to update again once we have full sharding. So it is a bit more complicated to get done than just straight up lowering the cost of storing data.

Starting point is 00:22:09 But it does feel like a happy medium, and hopefully that's something we can do kind of in the upgrade after the merge. And so if you were to put a timeline in that, what would that timeline be? No idea. And I think, yeah, yeah, I think the upgrade after the merge timeline, will probably depend on whether we think we want to do this more complicated new transaction type with data in them or just a simple data reduction cost. But yeah, the merge is not even over, so it's hard for me to predict how long it'll take

Starting point is 00:22:43 us to shift the next thing. Yeah, no, I got it. I got it. I was half teasing with that question. Okay, well, this has been incredibly fascinating. Yeah, just hopefully it will clarify a lot of things for people. Thank you so much for coming on Unchained. Of course, thank you for having me.

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Starting point is 00:23:55 direct deposit using code Laura. Download the On Juno app today. That's O NJUN-O and use code Laura for $50. Thanks for tuning in to this week's news recap. Holy acronym, the DTCC pilots the CBDC with the DDP. This week, the depository trust in Clearing Corporation, a private financial markets infrastructure company announced a central bank digital currency pilot program.

Starting point is 00:24:32 Dubbed Project Lithium, the DTCC will be working with the digital dollar project to explore how it might use blockchain technology. According to a press release, Project Lithium hopes that its program will help provide clarity as to how a CBDC may reduce trapped liquidity, increase capital efficiency, solidified delivery guarantees,

Starting point is 00:24:52 and add regulatory transparency, and provide it. other benefits as well, to the settlement process. A CBDC could improve time and cost efficiencies, provide broader accessibility to central bank money and payments, and all while emulating the features of physical cash in an increasingly digital world, explained former CFTC Chairman Christopher John Carlo, aka Crypto Dad, who spearheads the digital dollar project. According to the Atlantic Council and CBDC Tracker.org, this is the first CBDC pilot in the U.S. The DTCC claims to provide custody and asset servicing for securities issues from 177 countries

Starting point is 00:25:33 and territories valued at $87.1 trillion. Although the announcement came weeks after President Biden's executive order announcing research on a central banked digital currency, the DTCC and Digital Dollar Project are private sector entities that are not part of Biden's executive order. In his book, Crypto Dad, The Fight for the Future of Money, John Carla wrote, Money, especially digital money, is too important to be left to central bankers. Block and Blockstream to test Bitcoin mining using Tesla equipment. At Bitcoin 2022 in Miami, Adam Back, the CEO of Blockstream, announced a pilot crypto mine in Texas that, in partnership with Jack Dorsey's block, will be powered by Tesla solar and storage technology. The project is expected,

Starting point is 00:26:20 to be completely offline with Tesla's solar array powering the mine during the day and Tesla batteries powering the mining facility at night. The partnership will be small to start with just one megawatt of energy capacity. The $12 million in development costs will be split between block and block stream. The pilot project is expected to be up and running within months. Data regarding the program's energy consumption and hash rate will be publicly available. People like to debate about the different factors to do with Bitcoin mining. We figured, let's just prove it, have an open dashboard so people can play along, maybe it can inform other players to participate, back explained to CNBC.

Starting point is 00:27:03 63 months for Ethereum developer Virgil Griffith. 39-year-old former Ethereum developer Virgil Griffith was sentenced to five and a quarter years in prison after pleading guilty to conspiracy to violate the International Emergency Economic Powers Act last September. Griffith was originally arrested in 2019 after giving a presentation on cryptocurrency in Pyongyang, the capital of North Korea, despite being denied permission by the Department of State to do so. Prosecutors alleged that Griffith gave North Korea information that he knew could be used to evade and avoid U.S. sanctions and fund its nuclear weapons program.

Starting point is 00:27:43 Specifically, the Department of Justice says that Griffith and his co-conspirators also answered specific questions about blockchain and cryptocurrency technologies for the DPRK audience, including individuals whom Griffith understood worked for the North Korean government. In addition to a 63-month sentence, Griffith was also fined $100,000. Speaking of North Korea, the U.S. Treasury Department is alleging that Lazarus, a North Korean hacking group, is tied to the $600 million hack of the Ronan Bridge from earlier this month. The Treasury Department has added a wallet holding 148,000 ETH to its sanctions list. Celsius shuts down yield for most U.S. citizens.

Starting point is 00:28:26 U.S. regulators continue to force crypto companies to halt offerings of retail-based crypto yield. This week's mark was Celsius, a crypto-rewards platform that, much like BlockFi, offers an earn platform where users can deposit crypto tokens and accumulate yield at a rate between 0.65 and 18.63% per year. According to a Celsius blog post this week, non-accredited U.S. customers will no longer have access to its yield product starting April 15th due to regulatory uncertainty. As we have previously acknowledged, Celsius has been working closely with regulators around the world. It is our intention to be as transparent with our community as possible, Celsius wrote. More specifically, we have been in ongoing discussions with United States regulators regarding

Starting point is 00:29:12 our earned product. As a result, there will be changes to the way our earned product will work for users based in the United States. This means that Celsius customers who make less than $200,000 a year, or do not have a net worth of $1 million, will be borrowed from earning interest on the platform. Celsius customers who had deposited tokens before Friday, April 15th, will be grandfathered into Celsius's Earned program and can continue to be to be borrowed. to obtain yield on their investments.

Starting point is 00:29:40 The news is not surprising to anyone who has kept up with the crypto yield space. Notably, Celsius has been under scrutiny from U.S. regulators since 2021 and has faced obstacles in New Jersey, Texas, and Alabama. Furthermore, Celsius's major competitor, BlockFi, paid a $100 million fine to the SEC and state regulators for offering a lending product, which the SEC believes is the securities product to U.S. citizens without registration. Additionally, the SEC threatened to sue Coinbase after the exchange announced its intent to launch a crypto-interest-bearing product for U.S. citizens.

Starting point is 00:30:18 Coinbase listings spark skepticism and an insider trading allegation. In an effort to increase transparency in token listings, Coinbase published a blog post, revealing 50 tokens for which the exchange is considering offering support. The decision seems to have backfired. First of all, the list of tokens being considered was met with skepticism on Twitter. At Pasteryth was one of the more vocal voices and cited certain red flags with some of the tokens on Coinbase's list. For example, BOTTO has a market cap of $4 million. Crom, KROM is at roughly $10 million, and Mona is less than $4 million, while RIC is about $2 million, with zero volume.

Starting point is 00:31:01 Out of all the assets mentioned in the blog post by Coinbase, I have heard of maybe 10 of them, Pastry Eath wrote. Additionally, nearly half of them are under $20 million market cap and some as low as even $5 million. Pastry Eath then wondered, is Coinbase just stupid or is there something else going on? Secondly, in a move that has sparked insider information debates, an Ethereum wallet purchased more than $400,000 worth of tokens from the list three minutes before the list was made public. However, while the tokens briefly spiked in the hours after the announcement, it does not appear that the trader was able to turn a profit, as the wallet address holds less than $400,000, despite hitting $550,000 plus at one point. In related news, Robin Hood announced four new tokens on its platform. Customers now have access to Comp, Matic, Sol, and Shib.

Starting point is 00:31:55 Circle raises $400 million and partners with BlackRock. Circle, the company behind the stable coin USDC, announced a $400 million funding run this week, as well as the partnership with BlackRock, the world's largest asset manager. According to a press release from Circle, BlackRock will be the primary asset manager of USDC cash reserves and will be exploring capital market applications for USC. There is currently over $50 billion worth of USDC in circulation. Hate your NFT? Now you can return it. ERC 721R is a new token standard that could change the way NFT sales work.

Starting point is 00:32:35 The standard is a riff on ERC 721, which is the standard most Ethereum NFTs follow, with one significant difference. The R stands for return, meaning NFT purchasers have 30 days to request a refund after a mint. On its website, ERC 721 claims that the 30-day period will prevent quick rug pulls, promote accountability, protect floor prices, and lower the risk of purchasing. Currently, there are four different projects utilizing the token standard. Terraform Labs builds up LFG's reserves. Terraform Labs gifted $880 million worth of Luna, or 2.3% of Luna's market cap,

Starting point is 00:33:16 to Luna Foundation Guard to help continue building a backstop for Terra's algorithmic stablecoin, UST. Since February, LFG has purchased over 42,000 BTC, worth $1.7 billion, and has also announced plans to acquire $100 million in AVACs. Terraform Labs co-founder, Doe Kwan, has stated that LFG's goal is to build UST's reserve to $3 billion in the short term and $10 billion long term. Board Ape Yacht Restaurant? Bored in Hungary, a board apiote club-themed pop-up restaurant, launched on 7th Street in Long Beach last week. Spearheaded by Kevin C.O. and Andy Nguyen, the owner of BoardApe 6184, the smash burger-themed concept restaurant accepted Eith and Ape for its burger and fries,

Starting point is 00:34:05 and will continue to do so for three months. Speaking of Board Apes, PointeBase announced a trilogy of Board Ape Yacht Club themed films called the D-Gen trilogy. Ape owners chosen in the casting process will get a licensing fee of $10,000 in Ape or BTC. The first film should go out in June. A new owner for crypto Twitter? Elon Musk offered to buy Twitter for $41.3 billion on Thursday. Although this isn't a crypto story, it does bear mentioning, given that crypto Twitter is essentially Crypto's Town Square. As is the case with Elon, everything is a meme, and his offer equates to a share price of $54.20. Thanks so much for joining us today. To learn more about Tim and the Ethereum merge, check out of the show notes for this episode.

Starting point is 00:34:56 If you like the weekly news recap, how about getting it by email? You can sign up to receive it every Friday at laura shinn.bulleton.com. Again, that's laura shinn.com. Unchained is produced by me, Laura Shin, with help from Anthony Yoon, Daniel Nuss, Mark Murdoch, Shashok, and CLK transcription. Thanks for listening.

Unchained - Why Ethereum's Merge Was Delayed and Why It Won't Reduce Gas Fees Much - Ep.341

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