“The merge is cause for celebration,” ConsenSys announced on Thursday.
And to kick off the festivities, the blockchain firm will release “one of the first sustainable NFT drops on the Ethereum mainnet” called Regenesis.
Inspired by the merge, Ethereum’s transition from proof-of-work (PoW) to proof-of-stake (PoS), Regenesis will include various editions of nonfungible tokens (NFTs) of “elaborately detailed worlds that embody the benefits of the Merge: sustainability, security, and scalability.”
ConsenSys partnered with artist Chris Skinner and animation firm Keithcity Group to design the collection. (Disclosure: ConsenSys is one of 22 strategic investors in Decrypt.)
The collection’s primary theme, sustainability, will showcase Ethereum’s “ambitious re-architecture” of the Web3 world as well as its purported “2000x” improved efficiency.
The transition into PoS is estimated to reduce energy consumption by 99.95% since the PoW "consensus on Ethereum currently consumes the energy equivalent of a medium-sized country,” according to a report from the Ethereum Foundation last May.
The limited-edition NFTs will be free to mint on the day of the merge, which has been slated for some time between September 10 and 16. The NFTs will be available from 9:00 am EST.
“ConsenSys invites anyone curious about our ecosystem to try Web3-native tools like MetaMask to claim a piece of Ethereum history,” the post reads.
Crypto industry prepares for Ethereum Merge
Besides dropping merge-specific NFTs, other crypto firms are making their own preparations for the upgrade.
OpenSea, the industry’s largest NFT marketplace by trading volume, has rejected support for any potential forks that could emerge, stating that they “won’t be supported or reflected on OpenSea.”
Ethermine, the largest Ethereum mining pool, also announced staking services ahead of the merge. Dubbed Ethermine Staking, users can commit less than 0.1 Ethereum, unlike the hefty 32 Ethereum requirement for staking directly to Ethereum into the pool.
Crypto exchanges like FTX, Binance, Coinbase, and Bitfinex have all taken steps in prepping for the upgrade this month, with some offering clients trading for any forked tokens.