Ethereum (CRYPTO: ETH) developers have successfully launched one of the last test upgrades before The Merge goes live. With the completion of the recent Bellatrix Upgrade, Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin believes The Merge will officially happen sometime between Sept. 13 and Sept. 15.

As the day gets closer, there have been a handful of misconceptions circulating about exactly what will happen once Ethereum gets its highly anticipated upgrade. One surety of The Merge is the transition to a proof-of-stake consensus mechanism. By moving to proof-of-stake, Ethereum will use less energy, become more secure, and be better for implementing new scaling solutions.

Currently, Ethereum runs on a proof-of-work system that requires large amounts of energy. While on proof-of-work, Ethereum miners use high-powered computers to solve complex math problems to add blocks to the network and earn new tokens. By switching to proof-of-stake, it's believed that energy consumption will fall by 99.95% since there is no need for powerful computers to solve those math problems.

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Source Fool.com