Ethereum 'Merge' has huge implications for crypto mining and Bitcoin. Here's what you need to know

euronews.com:

The world’s second-largest cryptocurrency is undergoing a significant transformation that will change its technology to cut carbon emissions by more than 99 per cent, according to its platform Ethereum.

The transition known as "the Merge" is coming to Ethereum, which will upgrade its blockchain technology from the intensive energy-consuming model used by its rival Bitcoin.

While anticipation around the move has seen the price of Ethereum’s token, Ether (ETH), double in the last two months, not everyone is looking forward to the change.

Euronews Next looks at what is changing and how the transformation may affect the crypto market.

The first part of the Merge upgrade began on September 6 with the Bellatrix upgrade, which will mark a so-called "hard fork" which will convert Ethereum from a proof-of-work (PoW) to a proof-of-stake (PoS) base.  

The second part of the upgrade will happen between September 13 and September 15, the Ethereum Foundation said.

The Ethereum development team Nethermind said on September 10 that it had completed the prerequisite shadow fork test, which stress-tests synchronisation assumptions to ensure network safety. The previous one was performed in April and this was the final one.

The switch will take Ethereum from the intensive energy-consuming PoW model to the PoS model. Both mechanisms are used to confirm transactions and add new blocks to the chain, but they work differently.

The PoW system works like a competitive numeric guessing game and the first person to solve the puzzle is awarded a fixed amount of cryptocurrency. 

It requires a global network of computers to run at the same time when a transaction takes place and therefore a lot of energy.

In the PoS system, you do not need the energy-consuming