After years of waiting, Ethereum is finally poised to become a full-fledged Proof-of-Stake (PoS) blockchain. In addition to Ethereum’s native token, Ether (ETH), the valuation of other tokens has not only benefited greatly, but could continue to outperform ETH after the Merger.
Ethereum prepares for the Fusion
The leading smart contract platform completed the last of its three public testnets, dubbed “Goerli,” on August 11. Therefore, There should be no delays in the Ethereum “Merge”, which is expected to go live on September 19.
The price of Ether rose 5% to around $1,950, its highest level in more than two months, following the Goerli update. Meanwhile, certain crypto assets that could benefit from the Merger being successful are seeing moves to the upside, and have even been outperforming ETH in the past month.
Will these tokens continue to outperform ETH in September? Let’s take a closer look.
Lido DAO (LDO)
The merger will replace the army of Ethereum miners with validators, who will be required to have 32 ETH as economic participation.
This important staking requirement has opened up opportunities for brokersthat is, platforms that collect Ether from unfunded stakers and pool the proceeds to become validators on the Ethereum blockchain. Lido DAO is one of them.
Lido DAO is the leading staking service in terms of value locked within the official Fusion smart contract. In particular, it has invested 4.15 million ETH in the so-called ETH 2.0 contract, ahead of Coinbase, which has staked approximately 1.55 million ETH on behalf of its clients.
A successful Merger could drive demand for Lido DAO’s services.
At the same time, could prove bullish for the platform’s official government token, LDO, whose value had already shot up more than 200% since July 14, when Ethereum first announced the likelihood of becoming a PoS chain in September.
Therefore, LDO is one of the major crypto assets that could benefit the most from Ethereum’s successful transition to PoS.
Ethereum Classic (ETC)
Ethereum Classic (ETC) is another asset that has caught the eye of bulls in recent weeks. This is mainly due to its potential to provide a haven for miners leaving the Ethereum network.
Since Ethereum Classic is the split chain of a controversial hard fork in 2016, it exhibits almost all the technical qualities of the current Ethereum network, PoW, making it a natural haven for ETH miners.
Like LDO, ETC is also up more than 200% since the announcement of the Ethereum merger launch on July 14. Therefore, its probability of continuing its uptrend is high before and after the Merger.
Optimism (OP)
Optimism is an Ethereum rollup service. In other words, it aggregates massive off-chain transaction data in batches and releases the results back to the Ethereum mainnet when a consensus is reached.
The so-called layer 2 solution could benefit from Ethereum’s “rollup-focused roadmap” after the merger. Interestingly, OP, Optimism’s governance token, is up nearly 250% since the merger launch date announcement.
The prospects of Ethereum deploying Optimism on its network after the Merger could serve as a bullish catalyst for OP price.
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