Not just limited to the crypto believers, the world is now eyeing Ethereum’s Merge, one of the most important events in crypto history. The bloom of bitcoin prices and the rising of NFTs bring crypto into the public eye. Many bought their first crypto or NFT without even knowing how blockchain works while some of them decided to involve in the crypto industry. There are a lot of things to do in the cryptoland, you may choose to develop, trade, stake, validate, mine, or just simply HODL. Doesn’t matter whether you are holding Ethereum or not, The Merge does matter to everyone holding any crypto. There are a lot of good pieces out there that already covered the 5Ws & 1H of The Merge, hence I am sorting out 10 common misconceptions about The Merge for your reading pleasure.
✕ After The Merge, depositors can retrieve their staked ETH (stETH) on the Beacon Chain immediately.
✓ The Merge will not start the staking process, rather only after the Shanghai upgrade (expected to take place in early 2023), depositors may retrieve their staked ETH.
✕ Before the Shanghai upgrade, validators will not receive any ETH rewards.
✓ After The Merge, the ETH rewards/transaction fee income will be directly credited into the validator's Mainnet account and is ready to use anytime.
✕ When the withdrawal of staked ETH begins, depositors can receive their withdrawal immediately.
✓ Due to safety reasons, the withdrawal rate is limited and restricted, and on a turn-by-turn basis.
✕ After The Merge, the staking APY will increase to 12%.
✓ After The Merge, apart from staking rewards, the user will also receive handling fee rewards. According to ETH's latest network activity levels, staking APY is estimated to be around 7%.
✕ Gas fees after The Merge will be reduced.
✓ The short answer is no. Gas is a product of network demand relative to the network's capacity. The Merge deprecates the use of proof-of-work, transitioning to proof-of-stake for consensus, but does not significantly change any parameters that directly influence network capacity or transaction fee.
✕ Transaction speed after The Merge will be increased.
✓ The block time will be rather stable but no signification improvement on transaction speed.
✕ Depositors have to stake a minimum of 32 ETH to run a node.
✓ Anyone can run a node even without staking 32 ETH. The downside is that he/she will not be eligible for block rewards.
✕ There will be ETH downtime during The Merge.
✓ The upgrade from PoW to PoS is achieved without any downtime.
✕ ETH’s upgrade means merging.
✓ Upgrading is a long and arduous process that includes a lot of stages and processes. Historically, The Merge is ETH's most significant upgrade ever, yet it is not equivalent to an upgrade. An upgrade encompasses the whole umbrella, of which The Merge is a part of it.
✕ The Merge will accelerate the price of ETH to the upside.
✓ The Merge will not immediately complete the process of PoW to PoS as this transition is estimated to take 6 to 8 months. After The Merge, ETH will be facing a deflationary and hence it will not affect the price immediately.