On Wednesday the Ethereum Foundation clarified that The Merge will not reduce onchain fees as the highly anticipated transition from proof-of-work (PoW) to proof-of-stake (PoW) is now 29 days away. Amid The Merge update from the Ethereum Foundation, during the last month, Ethereum network costs have printed some of the lowest onchain fees since 2020.

Ethereum Foundation Clarifies ‘Gas Fees Are a Product of Network Demand’ — The Merge Does Not Significantly Change Any Parameters That Directly Influence Network Capacity or Throughput

The Ethereum Foundation wants to inform the public that although The Merge will move from PoW to PoS and that fees will fall, it is false to assume that this will happen. The statement was added to the foundation’s definition and summary of The Merge hosted on ethereum.org.

The page has been updated on a few occasions and the last update occurred on August 16, 2022. Ethereum developers are expected to convene for a meeting on August 18, 2022.

“Gas fees are a product of network demand relative to the network’s capacity,” the website’s newly updated summary explains. “The Merge disallows proof-of work, and transitions to proof-of stake for consensus. However, it does not significantly alter any parameters that directly affect network capacity or throughput .”

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While transaction fees on Ethereum won’t change following The Merge users will need to use layer two (L2) scaling solutions in order to get lower fees and wait for further Ethereum upgrades. After The Merge Ethereum will implement The Surge and The Verge as well as The Purge and The Splurge.

The Surge aims to help improve scaling by leveraging zero-knowledge rollups (ZK-rollups) via sharding techniques. Ethereum’s The Verge transition will apply Verkle trees in order to achieve statelessness by using the Merkle proof upgrade. Even though fees will not be reduced right away, Ethereum’s onchain fees have been at the lowest rates since 2020.

At the time of writing on August 17, bitinfocharts.com statistics show the average network fee today is 0. 0012 ether or $2. 28 per transfer. Etherscan.io’s Gas Tracker is even lower showing a high fee is around 22 gwei or $0. 85 per transaction.

An Opensea marketplace sale costs $2. 90, a Uniswap swap is $7. 47, and transferring an ERC20 like tether (USDT) is $2. 19 per transfer on Wednesday. Loopring and Zksync have the lowest L2 fees. They can cost between $0. 04 to $0. 06 to send ether.

What do you think about the Ethereum Foundation clarifying that The Merge will not reduce fees on the website ethereum.org? Please comment below to let us know your thoughts on this topic.

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