The Ethereum network’s Merge is set to take place by next month, and Vitalik Buterin is confident it will improve the network.

Vitalik Buterin, the co-founder of the Ethereum blockchain, believes that the Merge will make the Ethereum network more secure. Buterin said this while speaking at the Blockchain Futurist Conference in Toronto.

The Ethereum Merge will see the Ethereum blockchain finally migrate to a proof of stake mechanism. Earlier this week, the Ethereum proof-of-stake test Merge went live on Goerli.

This latest development meant that the Ethereum mainnet would migrate to a proof of stake on September 15/16. Commenting on this latest development, Buterin said;

“Ethereum’s energy consumption [after the merge] will be reduced by more than 99.9%, so it’s a big improvement. It’s also an opportunity to kind of take some of the ideas that we’ve learned over the last eight years or so, and use that to really redefine what the different parts of the Ethereum chain [can do].”

After the switch, Buterin is confident that the Ethereum network could be made more secure, transaction speed would increase, and costs would be lowered.

The Merge would also open up Ethereum up to more upgrades in the future, Buterin said. He added that once the Merge is completed, the biggest focus will be on the scalability of the Ethereum network.

Ether, the native coin of the Ethereum network, has performed excellently over the past few weeks. ETH declined towards the $1,000 mark a few months ago as the bear market affected the performances of numerous cryptocurrencies.

However, ETH is currently trading at around $1,900 per coin, up by more than 50% over the past four weeks.

ETH could rally higher over the coming weeks as the Merge will take place on September 15/16.