Merging Toward the Mainstream

Ethereum's Merge tackled its pollution problem. But widespread adoption is no sure thing.

- TAYLOR LOCKE

STEPS AWAY FROM the Temple of Poseidon, a monument to the golden age of Athens, sits the five-star Cape Sounio hotel. There, last October, more than 40 blockchain developers descended for a high-stakes workshop they dubbed Amphora. Outside, tourists explored the beauty of Greece. For their part, the devs sat in the hotel's beige, mostly windowless basement. For several nights they pounded out code until a dawn they did not see broke over the Aegean.

The devs had gathered from all corners of the globe to push forward the most ambitious project in blockchain history-one that many in the crypto world deemed impossible. The plan entailed preparation for an upgrade to Ethereum that, if they could pull it off, would wipe away more than 99% of the popular blockchain's future carbon footprint, while also laying the groundwork to bring crypto into the mainstream. The project would come to be known simply as the Merge.

Almost a year later, on Sept. 15, the Merge became a reality. What it will mean for the future of Ethereum, and for how business uses the blockchain, will be debated for months to come.

For those familiar with Ethereum's history, the image of ambitious developers crammed into a spartan space is fitting. Eight years ago, a similarly frenetic group piled into a mattress-strewn house in Zug, Switzerland, to turn Ethereum-an idea that was still little more than a white paper authored by then-teenaged genius Vitalik Buterin, its creator-into a real-world application.

The Zug crew eventually succeeded, and Ethereum is today the most popular blockchain in the world in terms of both applications and user numbers.