The Relationship between the Merge and Beacon Chain

The Merge represents the formal adoption of the Beacon Chain as the new consensus layer to the current Mainnet execution layer. Once The Merge happens, validators will be assigned to secure Ethereum Mainnet, and mining on proof-of-work will no longer be a valid means of block production.

Blocks will instead be proposed by validating nodes that have ether staked for the right to participate in consensus. These upgrades set the stage for future scalability upgrades, including sharding.

Beacon Explorer