Ether, the native token of the Ethereum blockchain, is leading the altcoin rally in the London session, as it is currently up 15% to trade a little above $1,900 as of the time of this writing, as bulls cheer on the success of the Goerli Testnet.

The Goerli Testnet, as previously reported by Nairametrics, is a beacon chain merger which will allow the Ethereum blockchain to switch from a Proof-of-Work (PoW) consensus mechanism to a Proof-of-Stake (PoS) consensus mechanism which is touted to be more energy efficient than the former.

Testnet like these are rehearsals for the eventual mainnet merger. Thus far, the Ropsten and Seploia networks have been merged with their respective beacon chains. The mainnet upgrade is still slated for the 19th of September 2022.

• The Goerli testnet merge, which has been finalized without any major issue today, suggests that there will be no delays to the tentative Ethereum Merge date set for September 19.
• Numerous key devs and figures in the Ethereum ecosystem have taken to Twitter to share their enthusiasm over the successful merge, such as core dev Preston Van Loon and podcaster/ETH proponent Anthony Sassano, who bullishly noted that “next up is (finally) the Ethereum mainnet!! The Merge is coming.”
• However, some noted there were minor issues that were also present in the previous two testnet merges. Ethereum developer Marius van der Wijden noted that there was some “confusion on the network because two different terminal blocks and lots of non-updated nodes” that slowed the process down slightly but stated that things were looking “quite good” anyway.
• The move from PoW to PoS is seen as one of the most significant upgrades in blockchain history. The Merge is expected to significantly reduce Ethereum’s energy consumption while bringing the network one step closer to its long-term scalability, security and sustainability goals.
• Once the Merge is complete, the next major landmark will be the multi-phased sharding upgrade that will significantly enhance the “distribution of data storage requirements, enabling rollups to be even cheaper, and making nodes easier to operate,” according to Ethereum’s website.
• On the news of the successful beacon chain merger, Ether now trades above $1,900, a price point it has not traded since June 2022. Taking a look at exchange activity, Ether’s trading volume has spiked up over 50% as many spot traders are looking to capitalized on the hype of the mainnet launch in a bid to turn a profit.

In the last 24 hours, there has been a total of approximately $460 million in liquidations according to data from Coinglass. Ether liquidations account for $238 million, which represents 51.74% of the total liquidations seen in the market. As you would expect, those who accounted for the lion share of the liquidations seen on Ether are those who bet against the rally on its token price. They represent $147 million or 61.76% of the total Ether liquidations. FTX accounted for the most Ether liquidations on its platform. This is followed by Okex and Binance in that order.