Ether soared more than 10% Monday as more crypto enthusiasts anticipate the upcoming network update following comments from an Ethereum Foundation member last week.
The second largest cryptocurrency behind bitcoin, traded at $1,476.04 early Monday and is 48.55% higher over the last month.
However, amid the broader crypto winter, ether is still 60% lower this year after it blasted above an all-time high price of $4,700 in November.
The highly anticipated merge, dubbed “Ethereum 2.0,” is meant to transition ethereum from the energy-intensive proof-of-work consensus mechanism to the more efficient proof-of-stake model.
Over the weekend, the Ethereum Foundation’s Tim Beiko said the merge could take place the week of September 19.
The proof-of-work is a system that relies on mining. Miners use strong CPUs to solve complicated equations and get rewards with a particular cryptocurrency from the blockchain ecosystem. Proof-of-work is highly criticized for its binarily high energy consumption and high costs. On the other hand, the proof-of-stake model isn’t power-intensive, and the blockchain validates blocks based on transactions instead of mining. The transition into PoS has been on the to-do list of Thereum since its launch in 2015.