Best crypto threads of the day – September 16th

Now that the ETH merge has happened, it's important that you learn the new terms and tooling around Proof of Stake. These concepts will help you navigate this new era of the Ethereum network.

Here's a quick and easy primer to get you started : pic.twitter.com/6y6EvEdzoX

— cygaar (@cygaar_dev) September 15, 2022

Let's start with the new terminology:

Validator – these are entities that validate and propose new blocks. Validators are the building blocks of the new PoS consensus mechanism. Validators are rewarded for their participation, similarly to how miners received ETH for mining.

— cygaar (@cygaar_dev) September 15, 2022

Slot – a 12 second period in which a randomly chosen validator has time to propose a block. A slot may be missing a block if the validator is inactive for some reason.

Epoch – a group of 32 slots, ~6.4 minutes.

Attestation – a "vote" by a validator if a block is valid or not.

— cygaar (@cygaar_dev) September 15, 2022

Checkpoint – pairs of blocks (at the top of an epoch) that are used to determine validity.

Justified – this means an epoch has been voted as valid and will be used as the start of the next checkpoint.

Finalized – these are epochs that are final and cannot be changed.

— cygaar (@cygaar_dev) September 15, 2022

Slashing – this happens when a validator is found to be a bad actor. A significant part of the validator's staked ETH is "slashed" or removed as a penalty.

There are more new terms associated with proof of stake, but this should give you a good starting point.

— cygaar (@cygaar_dev) September 15, 2022

Now let's talk about tooling:https://t.co/MqBLrw19aI and https://t.co/8p9jcJHCTt are the two most popular PoS block explorers. Both tools give in-depth looks into the state of the network. I'm going to highlight some features of each app that I've found helpful and interesting.

— cygaar (@cygaar_dev) September 15, 2022

This chart on the front page of beaconchain shows you the 5 most recent epochs and their statuses. The top epoch here isn't full because blocks are still being proposed. Green means a slot was filled with a block, red means a block was missing. pic.twitter.com/ls0aYoqfT0

— cygaar (@cygaar_dev) September 15, 2022

Zooming in, we see progress bars underneath the slots. The progress bars tell you which epochs are final, which ones are justified, and which ones are still in progress. The percentages represent the ratio of validators that have voted on a given epoch. pic.twitter.com/6yAwZqtD1A

— cygaar (@cygaar_dev) September 15, 2022

Both websites allow you to view epoch details (https://t.co/ewVn8lgpgJ or https://t.co/eS7KUr9ARd) and slot details (https://t.co/JIctKzHoNC or https://t.co/hImLazhys8).

— cygaar (@cygaar_dev) September 15, 2022

The front page of beaconscan has a nice chart showing validator participation rate. The higher the rate, the more likely epochs are going to be finalized. Higher rate = healthier network. The full participation chart can be found here: https://t.co/qusO9sWliE. pic.twitter.com/Lml9AafzT7

— cygaar (@cygaar_dev) September 15, 2022

beaconchain has some interesting dashboards here: https://t.co/FFSVScITvZ. The pool distribution chart in particular gives an overview on which entities are validating. The more distributed this chart is, the more decentralized ethereum becomes. pic.twitter.com/7VbiMk3GVG

— cygaar (@cygaar_dev) September 15, 2022

Both tools show you which validators have been slashed: https://t.co/kqlW6szzhT, https://t.co/XEr1uv14un. You can see why they were slashed and who they were slashed by.

— cygaar (@cygaar_dev) September 15, 2022

Finally, both tools give you a validator leaderboard: https://t.co/yGNjvDp0Mw and https://t.co/cSu6f1kWja. You can use these charts to see how much validators have earned from staking and validating on the network.

— cygaar (@cygaar_dev) September 15, 2022

What happened during the merge?

Let's look at some charts.

The number of transactions didn’t change much pic.twitter.com/zOCxtlYvH2

— Xangle Intern (@xangle_intern) September 16, 2022

But gas prices spiked as the merge occurred.

The merge doesn’t make transactions cheaper. So gas prices returned to previous levels shortly after. pic.twitter.com/H37VWagcjL

— Xangle Intern (@xangle_intern) September 16, 2022

After the merge, block time is now unified at 12 seconds per block. You can also see this in the below image. That is a 10% decrease in block time. pic.twitter.com/4VqB5MG6vy

— Xangle Intern (@xangle_intern) September 16, 2022

% of successful transactions dropped sharply during the merge, and went back up like nothing happened. pic.twitter.com/S1sLML6SY7

— Xangle Intern (@xangle_intern) September 16, 2022

stETH price compared to ETH jumped to 0.985.

We can guess some trades on ETHPOW may have affected the price movement. Or just people are feeling safer to hold stETH now? idk. pic.twitter.com/GKy2julDNX

— Xangle Intern (@xangle_intern) September 16, 2022

ETH became deflationary shortly after the merge but was only short lived.

Congrats to the community and everyone who could make this happen! pic.twitter.com/3O0BV8JKw8

— Xangle Intern (@xangle_intern) September 16, 2022