Searches for the ethereum merge have spiked to an all time high ahead of the upgrade this September 15th.

Google searches for the ethereum merge have more than 5x-ed over last month, from 17 out of 100 to 100 out of 100.

Little Lithuania has proportionally most searches, but Canada is also in top 5 and USA is not far behind.

These searches are still a fraction of ‘ethereum’ searches, but they’re significant enough for Google to categorize the term ‘ethereum merge’ as trending.

Showing interest has increased considerably recently after the equivalent of a block number was set for the upgrade expected in one month.

That will upgrade ethereum to Proof of Stake, reducing energy usage by close to 100% as GPUs or ASICs will no longer be needed to secure the network, staked eth so performing the job from September.

Ethereum’s inflation rate will in addition be reduced to close to zero as staking is far more efficient than mining at validating blocks.

As part of the fees are burned, the total supply of eth might also fall even during bear markets, and significantly so during bull times.

This will, most crucially, make ethereum’s ‘monetary policy’ more certain as its parameters will not change again in the foreseeable future, making eth comparable and potentially even better than bitcoin from an issuance store of value point of view.

That’s especially as there remains some slight uncertainty on how bitcoin will pay for its security once block rewards fall below one bitcoin with a bitcoin developer, Peter Todd, proposing an endless fixed new supply similar to Dogecoin.

That will probably cause a chain-split in BTC in about two halvings, so 2028, while eth is removing any uncertainty next month with its combined formula of low block rewards and fee burning striking the balance between the need to pay for security while also not devaluing the asset.