To reach as many people as possible and educate them with proper knowledge about The Merge. What it means to you and what happens next.

This is significant for all of us because it impacts Ethereum, arguably one of the most important L1s of our time, and everything that surrounds it. And there isn't nearly enough accurate information available. There are also numerous myths that must be discussed.

SSV Network is holding a series of talks with industry leaders in the run-up to the Ethereum merge date to educate crypto enthusiasts about what happens during the merge and how it affects multiple ecosystems.

This is a combined summary of the fifth and sixth episodes for non-geeky normies.

I. The Current State Of Developing On Crypto Market

@sassal0x and 0xvitto.eth discussed the current state of developing on Ethereum and what would happen after The Merge.

Vitto Rivabella is tackling the single most important problem in web3 with the greatest potential impact. Vitto's mission is to spread the faith and onboard web2 talents for the web3 space. This is the single most important driver and factor in the future success of the industry.

Vitto is working for Alchemy - a protocol provides a Web 3 developer platform. It makes use of a node provider, much like how you would spin up a cloud application on AWS. So Alchemy has a lot of nodes with extremely complex node balance. Furthermore, all decentralized applications must be stable, accurate, scalable, and reliable. They also developed a number of query solutions that enable users to use APIs to obtain NFT tokens and transfer API transaction without having to query the entire blockchain.

From an educational standpoint, this greatly helped in the onboarding of a large number of web3 developers. Vitto believes that the number of Web3 developers increased by +30,000% in the last year, which meant a lot for the space.

In recent months, the cryptocurrency market has been in a bear market, with a very toxic landscape web3 for a portion of it 70% of the consumer base. We saw a lot of rugs and Web3 was very toxic. Scams were everywhere. And there was no such thing as security. Take Terra, for example, Vitto reminded everyone that the same thing happened in early 2000s with the Internet boom, where as soon as they crushed the bear market, many projects vanished, leaving only those with a meaning purpose to be there. This is cool because, in addition to filtering cool projects from projects that are only there to make a bunch of money.

This also makes it possible for a large number of people to enter this landscape:

• Ethereum price dropped and all coins prices dropped drastically. Prices are lower as it serves as a good entry point for newcomers.

• Investors are investing less, but builders are building significantly more.

Monetizing is difficult for artists, including photographers, CGI artists, concept artists, painters, and yoga teachers. Vitto stated that he had seen everything out there and that they are attempting to monetize their art. Although there are some technicalities that can be used to deploy the services without any technical knowledge, they can also become interested in these technicalities and begin learning how to develop smart contracts and how everything functions.

He believes that sometimes we use the term "web3" simply as a marketing buzzword to describe a suite of technologies, when in fact it mainly refers to front-end. The difference is in the library, and your company probably has one smart contract developer who will do the heavy lifting and front-end technicalities for you. Simply change from fetch to ether.js. From that perspective, a lot of front-end developers and designers are inevitably making the switch to web3.

Alchemy has received over 7000 developer subscriptions in the last two months, owing to Vitto's passion for games. He  is extremely optimistic.

They're currently working on a web3 game as a side project to see how far they can take this technology in games. Because all of the games around there are currently unavailable. There are no triple-A, and Vitto believes it is critical to create something of high quality for all players, not just those looking to make money.

Many blockchain games appear to be played for monetary gain. Many of them have been called ponzi schemes. Those bad projects will be restructured. People who are interested in crypto gaming will then enter the ecosystem.

a) 4 types of Builders

1. DeFi buiders: Many cutting-edge protocols are being developed, but because DeFi is less trusted, people are ignoring them

2. Web3 games builders

• There're no triple-A games -> it's critical to create high quality for all players, not those looking for a quick buck

• Ponzi projects will be restructured --> People who are truly interested in gaming will then enter the ecosystem

1. Wallet builders:one of the most active elements in onboarding new users into the web3

2. NFTs builders: most NFT builders will certainly have to move to layer2 due to the high gas fee of Ethereum

b) 3 types of Developers

1. Eclectic Developers: who are new to web3. These individuals include:

• Musicians, yoga instructors, painters, photographers, CGI artists, concept artists and others

• Those are attempting to monetize their art wil begin their developer journey

1. Query Developers: those with year(s) of experience who can generate a development idea regardless

2. Web3 believers: These are the people who believe that entering the web-3 landscape will make them millionaires & offer better security

For Ethereum, Vitto says that many people are building on ETH, and the main reason is that many poor countries cannot afford the cost. These people developing for these countries to solve real-world problems, not to be trendy or to have a wider reach.

More than half of the developers (55 to 60%) are building on L2 chains such as Polygon, optimism, arbitrum, or others, while the remaining 45 to 40% are building on Ethereum.

NFT will almost certainly have to move to layer 2 because many of them aren't valuable and trading them on Ethereum makes no sense due to the high gas fee.

The merge itself does nothing for end users, but it does lay the groundwork for future upgrades. Sharding is now one of the major future upgrades. Now that sharding has evolved over time, it is a term that is used to describe the process of separating data into smaller pieces. Originally, it was going to be called execution sharding.

Major events which will be implemented after The Merge:

• The Merge: 100% converse to POS

• The Surge: Increase the expansion of Rollups via Sharding

• The Verge: Optimize storing data, reduce the size of Node

• The Purge: Reduce the hard drive space required for Validators

• The Splurge: Upgrade til ETH works smoothly

The Ethereum base layer is extremely secure, extremely decentralized, and obviously after the merge that will get even better, and then they give everyone in the world the ability to build on top of it, and with layer2s we can also collapse the costs of doing so.

As an example, consider the crash of a stable coin (Terra), where bad architecture, bad design, and everything went to zero as soon as the market fell. Because algorithmic stable coins are extremely risky, it’ll no longer worke. Even if Ethereum becomes more secure, people will not necessarily become more certain about anything.

The goal of developers building on top of Ethereum, which already provides us with security tools, is to keep our users out of the dark forest that has become Ethereum in the last year and a half.

With the merge, the narrative change surrounding Ethereum's energy use will be significant for those who were on the fence.

IV. What About Security?

Mudit Gupta has been writing a security-focused blog about the ups and downs of the cryptocurrency industry. He is in charge of information and security at Polygon.

Security is critical which is why projects and protocols from all over the world are looking for more.

The majority of DeFi may have implementation flaws, but attackers will not look at a coin with $100 in TVL. They attempt to take advantage of a $100 million bridge instead.

This is due to the fact that bridge implementation bugs are extremely dangerous, and bridges have them because they are among the most complex pieces of code available. To be decentralized and support so many chains, it must be one of the most complex bridge architectures available. The disadvantage is that complexity is clearly the most dangerous adversary of security. Any minor error can result in problems such as Nomad - A bridge that has been exploited recently.

Nomad's team was, and still is, one of the most talented in the space. But it still happened, proving that no one is perfect. Implementation, bugs, and other blunders can occur at any time. We can simply reduce the likelihood of them occurring by having more people review the code, conducting more audits, and adopting bug bounty programs.

Bridges usually have a lot of TVL in them, which makes them a huge honey pot. Sassal believes that these things rose to prominence in recent years because there is so much capital invested in them, and many of them are relatively new. It becomes especially frightening when we have incidents like the Solana hack. Right now, the root cause is simply not being identified.

From a security standpoint, there isn't much to be excited about in The Merge, at least not on the positive side. When we switch to proof of stake, Ethereum turns green. At the very least, others will be unable to use Ethereum's environmental impact as a parameter to attack Ethereum. They'll have to get to work and figure out something more complicated. Attacking Ethereum requires more technical knowledge. They can attack Ethereum in a variety of ways, but environmental impact is unlikely to be one of them anytime soon.

Larger players, such as Circle ($USDC), Tether ($USDT), Aave, Chainlink and others determine that they support PoS Ethereum.

That chain will become the hub for everything, with all of tokens having value. The other chain will simply have numbers attached to it with no values. Then there will be a network effect in which, for example, if one large player supports one chain, others will begin to follow them and support the same chain.

Nobody wants to fight each other, at least not decentralized players, which means that even if the other chain was or is technically superior. In the case of ETHPoW fork, it will simply die down. The other chain, the fork, will be technically inferior to the POS chain, so it will have no reason to exist.

There will likely be a fork. To challenge the main network, all of the miners band together and create a single fork. That may last longer because it has more support. However, in the real world, people are greedy. Everyone wants their fork to be more powerful. Sassal is unsure if they will be able to agree and coordinate on a single fork, so he hopes they don't coordinate too much and create a bunch of smaller people who will fade away even faster.

To reach as many people as possible and educate them with proper knowledge about The Merge. What it means to you and what happens next.

This is significant for all of us because it impacts Ethereum, arguably one of the most important L1s of our time, and everything that surrounds it. And there isn't nearly enough accurate information available. There are also numerous myths that must be discussed.

SSV Network is holding a series of talks with industry leaders in the run-up to the Ethereum merge date to educate crypto enthusiasts about what happens during the merge and how it affects multiple ecosystems.

This is a combined summary of the fifth and sixth episodes for non-geeky normies.

I. The Current State Of Developing On Crypto Market

@sassal0x and 0xvitto.eth discussed the current state of developing on Ethereum and what would happen after The Merge.

Vitto Rivabella is tackling the single most important problem in web3 with the greatest potential impact. Vitto's mission is to spread the faith and onboard web2 talents for the web3 space. This is the single most important driver and factor in the future success of the industry.

Vitto is working for Alchemy - a protocol provides a Web 3 developer platform. It makes use of a node provider, much like how you would spin up a cloud application on AWS. So Alchemy has a lot of nodes with extremely complex node balance. Furthermore, all decentralized applications must be stable, accurate, scalable, and reliable. They also developed a number of query solutions that enable users to use APIs to obtain NFT tokens and transfer API transaction without having to query the entire blockchain.

From an educational standpoint, this greatly helped in the onboarding of a large number of web3 developers. Vitto believes that the number of Web3 developers increased by +30,000% in the last year, which meant a lot for the space.

In recent months, the cryptocurrency market has been in a bear market, with a very toxic landscape web3 for a portion of it 70% of the consumer base. We saw a lot of rugs and Web3 was very toxic. Scams were everywhere. And there was no such thing as security. Take Terra, for example, Vitto reminded everyone that the same thing happened in early 2000s with the Internet boom, where as soon as they crushed the bear market, many projects vanished, leaving only those with a meaning purpose to be there. This is cool because, in addition to filtering cool projects from projects that are only there to make a bunch of money.

This also makes it possible for a large number of people to enter this landscape:

• Ethereum price dropped and all coins prices dropped drastically. Prices are lower as it serves as a good entry point for newcomers.

• Investors are investing less, but builders are building significantly more.

Monetizing is difficult for artists, including photographers, CGI artists, concept artists, painters, and yoga teachers. Vitto stated that he had seen everything out there and that they are attempting to monetize their art. Although there are some technicalities that can be used to deploy the services without any technical knowledge, they can also become interested in these technicalities and begin learning how to develop smart contracts and how everything functions.

He believes that sometimes we use the term "web3" simply as a marketing buzzword to describe a suite of technologies, when in fact it mainly refers to front-end. The difference is in the library, and your company probably has one smart contract developer who will do the heavy lifting and front-end technicalities for you. Simply change from fetch to ether.js. From that perspective, a lot of front-end developers and designers are inevitably making the switch to web3.

Alchemy has received over 7000 developer subscriptions in the last two months, owing to Vitto's passion for games. He  is extremely optimistic.

They're currently working on a web3 game as a side project to see how far they can take this technology in games. Because all of the games around there are currently unavailable. There are no triple-A, and Vitto believes it is critical to create something of high quality for all players, not just those looking to make money.

Many blockchain games appear to be played for monetary gain. Many of them have been called ponzi schemes. Those bad projects will be restructured. People who are interested in crypto gaming will then enter the ecosystem.

a) 4 types of Builders

1. DeFi buiders: Many cutting-edge protocols are being developed, but because DeFi is less trusted, people are ignoring them

2. Web3 games builders

• There're no triple-A games -> it's critical to create high quality for all players, not those looking for a quick buck

• Ponzi projects will be restructured --> People who are truly interested in gaming will then enter the ecosystem

1. Wallet builders:one of the most active elements in onboarding new users into the web3

2. NFTs builders: most NFT builders will certainly have to move to layer2 due to the high gas fee of Ethereum

b) 3 types of Developers

1. Eclectic Developers: who are new to web3. These individuals include:

• Musicians, yoga instructors, painters, photographers, CGI artists, concept artists and others

• Those are attempting to monetize their art wil begin their developer journey

1. Query Developers: those with year(s) of experience who can generate a development idea regardless

2. Web3 believers: These are the people who believe that entering the web-3 landscape will make them millionaires & offer better security

For Ethereum, Vitto says that many people are building on ETH, and the main reason is that many poor countries cannot afford the cost. These people developing for these countries to solve real-world problems, not to be trendy or to have a wider reach.

More than half of the developers (55 to 60%) are building on L2 chains such as Polygon, optimism, arbitrum, or others, while the remaining 45 to 40% are building on Ethereum.

NFT will almost certainly have to move to layer 2 because many of them aren't valuable and trading them on Ethereum makes no sense due to the high gas fee.

The merge itself does nothing for end users, but it does lay the groundwork for future upgrades. Sharding is now one of the major future upgrades. Now that sharding has evolved over time, it is a term that is used to describe the process of separating data into smaller pieces. Originally, it was going to be called execution sharding.

Major events which will be implemented after The Merge:

• The Merge: 100% converse to POS

• The Surge: Increase the expansion of Rollups via Sharding

• The Verge: Optimize storing data, reduce the size of Node

• The Purge: Reduce the hard drive space required for Validators

• The Splurge: Upgrade til ETH works smoothly

The Ethereum base layer is extremely secure, extremely decentralized, and obviously after the merge that will get even better, and then they give everyone in the world the ability to build on top of it, and with layer2s we can also collapse the costs of doing so.

As an example, consider the crash of a stable coin (Terra), where bad architecture, bad design, and everything went to zero as soon as the market fell. Because algorithmic stable coins are extremely risky, it’ll no longer worke. Even if Ethereum becomes more secure, people will not necessarily become more certain about anything.

The goal of developers building on top of Ethereum, which already provides us with security tools, is to keep our users out of the dark forest that has become Ethereum in the last year and a half.

With the merge, the narrative change surrounding Ethereum's energy use will be significant for those who were on the fence.

IV. What About Security?

Mudit Gupta has been writing a security-focused blog about the ups and downs of the cryptocurrency industry. He is in charge of information and security at Polygon.

Security is critical which is why projects and protocols from all over the world are looking for more.

The majority of DeFi may have implementation flaws, but attackers will not look at a coin with $100 in TVL. They attempt to take advantage of a $100 million bridge instead.

This is due to the fact that bridge implementation bugs are extremely dangerous, and bridges have them because they are among the most complex pieces of code available. To be decentralized and support so many chains, it must be one of the most complex bridge architectures available. The disadvantage is that complexity is clearly the most dangerous adversary of security. Any minor error can result in problems such as Nomad - A bridge that has been exploited recently.

Nomad's team was, and still is, one of the most talented in the space. But it still happened, proving that no one is perfect. Implementation, bugs, and other blunders can occur at any time. We can simply reduce the likelihood of them occurring by having more people review the code, conducting more audits, and adopting bug bounty programs.

Bridges usually have a lot of TVL in them, which makes them a huge honey pot. Sassal believes that these things rose to prominence in recent years because there is so much capital invested in them, and many of them are relatively new. It becomes especially frightening when we have incidents like the Solana hack. Right now, the root cause is simply not being identified.

From a security standpoint, there isn't much to be excited about in The Merge, at least not on the positive side. When we switch to proof of stake, Ethereum turns green. At the very least, others will be unable to use Ethereum's environmental impact as a parameter to attack Ethereum. They'll have to get to work and figure out something more complicated. Attacking Ethereum requires more technical knowledge. They can attack Ethereum in a variety of ways, but environmental impact is unlikely to be one of them anytime soon.

Larger players, such as Circle ($USDC), Tether ($USDT), Aave, Chainlink and others determine that they support PoS Ethereum.

That chain will become the hub for everything, with all of tokens having value. The other chain will simply have numbers attached to it with no values. Then there will be a network effect in which, for example, if one large player supports one chain, others will begin to follow them and support the same chain.

Nobody wants to fight each other, at least not decentralized players, which means that even if the other chain was or is technically superior. In the case of ETHPoW fork, it will simply die down. The other chain, the fork, will be technically inferior to the POS chain, so it will have no reason to exist.

There will likely be a fork. To challenge the main network, all of the miners band together and create a single fork. That may last longer because it has more support. However, in the real world, people are greedy. Everyone wants their fork to be more powerful. Sassal is unsure if they will be able to agree and coordinate on a single fork, so he hopes they don't coordinate too much and create a bunch of smaller people who will fade away even faster.