the merger is one of the most historic crypto events ever

• Ben Edgington is Principal Product Owner at Ethereum software company ConsenSys.
• As a developer, he says the upgrade is like “change the engine en route” on an aircraft.
• Edgington has been working about 15-hour days before the upgrade, which is scheduled for mid-September.

In an industry known for high turnover and volatility—one accustomed to both teenage tourist investors and FOMO capital allocators—Ethereum developer Ben Edgington has a different approach to crypto.

Edgington, the founder and product manager of the open-source Ethereum consensus client Teku, has been working on the blockchain’s long-awaited upgrade, Merge, for the past 4.5 years. For a space that’s only about 15 years old, that’s practically an eternity.

From approximately 7:00 AM to 10:00 PM each day, it’s “heads down” and focuses on Ethereum’s network. Edgington spends half his time working on Teku for Ethereum software company ConsenSys, and the other half on a technical book he’s writing about the smart contract network’s series of upgrades.

“Every day is different. This is the joy of being in crypto, right? Every week is an adventure, every day is a drama,” he told Insider, noting that two hours of his work day are also spent on Twitter . “Everything is crypto from start to finish in one way or another.”

Edgington, who says he is even older than Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin’s father, has been working on the upgrade long before the mainstream hype of celebrity and crypto partnerships. Even before the launch of other now-popular tier-1 blockchains like Solana and years before Sam Bankman-Fried’s FTX, he dreamed of having “a seat at the table to participate in the development of Ethereum’s protocol.”

“We believe we are building infrastructure that will support decentralized projects for perhaps decades to come,” he said. “Building it right is critically important, so that’s what’s inspiring, the idea that we’re building a global infrastructure that others will build incredible applications on top of.”

From Wall Street to digital asset hedge funds, many are looking forward to the merger as a time to capitalize on potential bullishness and high yield trades. Edgington says that’s “absolutely not our goal as developers.”

“I’m not really into price speculation. I’ve personally been working on this thing for years. Crypto has been through a bunch of ups and downs,” he said. “The goal is technical and environmental. Price is disconnected from that for me.”

The Merge ‘replaces the engine mid-flight’

It is the third most important event in the history of crypto, he says, notched right after the invention of bitcoin and ethereum.

Scheduled for mid-September, the upgrade will be the “most ambitious thing ever done” in the industry.

The upgrade is “fundamentally rebuilding a chain that has hundreds of billions of dollars in value, so we’re replacing the engine in the middle of the plane.”

“The full infrastructure of Ethereum is being moved onto this Proof of Stake platform, so it’s all the DeFi activities, all the NFT activities, everything that happens on Ethereum,” he added. “That’s hundreds of billions of dollars worth of activity.”

Another way it has gained relevance, says Edgington, is the upgrade’s environmental impact on the network. The merger, which brings Ethereum from the energy-intensive Proof of Work to the Proof of Stake model, is billed as a way to reduce energy use by 99%.

“Ethereum emits almost a megaton of carbon dioxide … which I think is terrifying,” he said. “Putting a stop to that, for me, is huge and has always been a big driver.”

From a financial perspective, he says that the upgrade can also double the input income. This will allow individual users to earn more passive income by contributing to Ethereum’s network, while making it more secure and keeping their tokens.

“What does it mean for strikers? Basically it means increased reward for striking,” he said. “They become eligible for transaction revenue and MEV, which is mineable value. It can be extracted from blocks by reordering transactions.”

However, Edgington says his work isn’t over after the merger, and he certainly won’t stop building on Ethereum’s network anytime soon.

“I want to stress that this is just a start, right? We’ve had this concept for a long time and it has a lot of moving parts,” he said. “This is a decade-long program of refinements and upgrades to the protocol. Maybe then we can pull back. I mean, at least I hope so.”