The announcement of the anticipated upgrade, The Merge, on the Ethereum network made positive impact on its native asset ETH as well as its staked derivative on Lido finance called staked Ether (stETH) and that has resulted in an increase in the number of whales too. Last Thursday, Ethereum Foundation member Tim Beiko suggested September 19 as the provisional launch date for The Merge, which will see the Ethereum network transition from the energy-intensive proof-of-work consensus mechanism to a more environment-friendly proof-of-stake mechanism.

As per on-chain analysis provider Santiment, the so-called whales — holding between 1,000 to 100,000 ETH — had seen a sharp increase in the past few weeks after bottoming in May, which halted a months-long negative streak.

More precisely, there were 131 new such wallets emerging until Sunday, with the total number briefly exceeding 6,666. The trend is similar with smaller Ether investors too with those holding at least a full one has charted an all-time high of over 1.5 million. Addresses with 100 or more coins, on the other hand, are up to a 15-month high of more than 45,000.

Meanwhile, the price of Ether has surged by close to 40 percent too climbing from the $1,050 (roughly Rs. 84,015) price range to $1,526 (roughly Rs. 1.22 lakh) at the time of publishing. A few days before the shadow fork went live, ETH had plummeted to around $1,000 (roughly Rs. 80,015), and the community feared another drop below that line. However, the hype didn’t allow such a dip, and the second-largest crypto went on a roll.

The highly anticipated upgrade in the Ethereum network, The Merge is expected to make the successful transition of blockchain from its current proof-of-work consensus mechanism to proof-of-stake. Additionally, this would also bring some cutting-edge features in terms of high transaction speed, low gas fees and scalability.