Ethereum Merge Deep Dive: Will my money be safe?

By Arndt Voges

Last updated at 9/16/2022

2 min read

By the time you listen to this, the Merge is less than a day away. And you might suddenly start to freak out: What if things go wrong - will my Ethereum be gone?

Today, in part three of our week-long Ethereum Merge special, we’ll help you put your mind at ease: Your money is very likely to be safe - even if the worst case happens.

As we explained yesterday, the Merge is designed to be seamless. Most likely, you won’t even notice that it happened. That’s thanks to the secret double life that Ethereum has been living: Your money existed on the “new” Ethereum all along, and with the Merge, things will just be official.

If you hold your money in an exchange account like Robinhood or Coinbase, don’t panic if you can’t withdraw or trade for a short period: Out of caution, they will pause Ethereum activities on their accounts. It’s all to make sure things are fine before going back to business as usual.

But what if things go horribly wrong: Some glitch in the Matrix, a wrinkle in the Ethereum code? Well, even then you should be ok. It helps to remember the fundamentals: Blockchains are nothing but glorified history books that record every transaction that ever happened on them. And millions of computers hold a copy of Ethereum’s history, right up to the time of the Merge. If stuff goes wrong, that history can be rolled back to what it was before the error and we can all move on.

So – sit back and enjoy this historical moment. If you want to follow it live, just type into Google “Ethereum Merge” and it’ll show you a cool countdown. And most likely, you guessed it, you’ll just sit there and won’t even notice anything happening. And that’s a good thing.