Why Coinbase Will Pause Ethereum Transactions During “The Merge”

In around a month, Ethereum will transition from a Proof-of-Work (PoW) to a Proof-of-Stake (PoS) consensus. This event was dubbed “The Merge”, tentatively set for September 15 to 16, and will complete a 6-year journey into the new consensus algorithm and blockchain.

Users, exchange platforms, miners, and developers are gearing up for the event. Major crypto exchange platform Coinbase recently announced their measures ahead of the Ethereum “Merge” via an official post.

The exchange will “briefly” pause transactions with Ethereum and with tokens using the ERC-20 standards, these includes deposits and withdrawals. The platform claims that this decision is a “precautionary measure” for the users.

The crypto exchange platform made the following recommendation to users as “The Merge” becomes a certainty across the Ethereum ecosystem, but confusion arise in the community:

We recommend you don’t send your ETH to anyone in an attempt to “upgrade to ETH2” as there is no ETH2 token. Your assets will be safe and secure during this period and no action is required to upgrade on your part.

The platform emphasized the former point: ahead of “The Merge” users will see an ETH2 ticker to represent staked ETH. This ticker will be outdated once the PoS transition is completed as there “is no ETH2 token”.

The pause in Ethereum transactions will enable Coinbase to “ensure that the transition has been successfully reflected by our systems” and to mitigate any potential threats to the users’ funds. On the latter, Coinbase claims that they are not expecting issues for other cryptocurrencies or additional operations:

We do not expect any other networks or currencies to be impacted and expect no impact to trading for ETH and ERC-20 tokens across our centralized trading products.

What Ethereum Users Will Experience During The Merge On Coinbase

The exchange platform claimed that “The Merge” will allow Ethereum to move forward on its roadmap towards implementing more upgrades and improving on scalability. During the event, Coinbase committed to informing its users of the status related to ETH and ERC-20 transactions.

In that sense, they asked their users to keep their eyes open for potential scams which are sure to be on the rise during “The Merge” and the controversy around the different ETH tokens. The exchange claims that all users’ funds will be secure during this event.

In addition, the crypto exchange warned users about potential dealers with other Ethereum-related services. Specifically, Coinbase Prime and Exchange customers might experience “temporary delays in custody withdrawal availability”. The company concluded:

(…) the Merge is the culmination of years of work by the Ethereum Foundation, independent researchers, client teams, infrastructure providers like Coinbase Cloud, and many others. At Coinbase, our role is to protect users’ assets and help ensure a seamless transition across Coinbase products.

At the time of writing, ETH’s price trades at $1,870 with a 2% loss in the last 24 hours.