Hype from the merger brings back $2,000 for Ethereum.

The price of Ethereum surpassed $2,000 early Saturday as excitement grows ahead of its pivotal Proof-of-Stake update.

In this week's update, Ethereum's developers have proposed a release date for "the Merge" of the network to occur in the middle of September.

The Merge Rally Pushes Ethereum Past $2,000

Despite several setbacks, the Merge market is thriving.

Ethereum's recent surge continued over the weekend, marking the first time since May that it has traded above $2,000.

The second-largest cryptocurrency by market cap is currently trading just above a significant psychological threshold, according to data from CoinGecko. Over the previous week, its value has increased by about 16%.

Ethereum's recent rally brings it to almost 100% higher than its June low, when the crypto market as a whole crashed after the bankruptcy of Three Arrows Capital.

Although several digital currencies have profited from the market's recovery, ETH has fared better than most due to rising interest in the historic "Merge" event that it will host.

In what has been called one of the largest crypto developments in history, Ethereum is finally going to finish its long-delayed upgrade to Proof-of-Stake in the coming weeks.

When Ethereum's Proof-of-Work execution layer and Proof-of-Stake consensus layer are combined, a process known as "The Merge" will occur.

Instead of miners verifying transactions, the network will henceforth rely on validators staking ETH.

The Ethereum community as a whole is on board with "The Merge" because of the positive benefits it will bring, such as a 90% decrease in ETH issuance (because the network will no longer need to pay miners) and a 99.9% decrease in energy consumption.

The so-called "Merge trade" has gained popularity in recent weeks as investors attempt to capitalize on the buzz surrounding the upgrade.

Many tokens that are connected to Ethereum, such as Lido and RocketPool, have also seen price increases.

Since it uses Proof-of-Work like Ethereum, Ethereum Classic has also been successful and may become a center for miners who decide to switch from Ethereum.

Even with backing from people like Justin Sun, some Proof-of-Work supporters are aiming to fork Ethereum to preserve a separate ecosystem for miners.

After Ethereum's final test run for the update on the Goerli testnet, ETH continued its Merge rise this week.

As a result, engineers at the Ethereum Foundation have informally decided that the update will go live after the network reaches a Total Terminal Difficulty of 587500000000000000000, at which point blocks will be mined using Proof-of-Stake.

That is scheduled to arrive between September 15 and September 16.