The long-awaited Merge is tentatively scheduled to ship around September 15, 2022 and as a precautionary measure, crypto exchange Coinbase will pause Ethereum (ETH) and ERC-20 token deposits and withdrawals during the upgrade.
Coinbase announced in a blog post on Aug 16 that ETH and ERC-20 token deposits and withdrawals will be frozen briefly as a precautionary measure.
This downtime enables it to ensure that the transition has been correctly reflected by its systems, even if the Merge is anticipated to be seamless from the perspective of the user. Neither other network and currencies nor trading for ETH and ERC-20 tokens across Coimbase’s centralised trading products will be affected.
Coinbase users will be notified of the resumption of deposit and withdrawal services through the exchange’s Twitter and Status Page.
The exchange also advises users to be alert for scams. ETH2 is the ticker Coinbase set up before the Merge to represent staked ETH – it will no longer be used after the Merge. As there is no ETH2 token, users should not send their ETH to anyone in an attempt to “upgrade to ETH2”. User’s assets will be safe and secure before the merge and no action is required to upgrade from the user’s perspective.
Staked ETH (ETH2) balance following the merge can be found in the user’s Ethereum (ETH) wallet on the platform. Any unstaked ETH or dapp wallet ETH balance will be reported separately from any staked ETH. The latter won’t be unlocked at the time of the Merge or be available to trade or transfer until the Ethereum protocol upgrade completes.
Ethereum is changing from a Proof-of-Work network that depends on miners to validate transactions to one that depends on validators who “stake” Ethereum tokens in exchange for a chance to validate transactions (Proof-of-Stake). The Merge is projected to greatly reduce the network’s energy consumption (by more than 99.99%), and improve security and scalability.
