Ethereum recently completed a significant upgrade, with the main goal of making this blockchain platform more efficient, environmentally friendly, and cheaper. In simple terms, before the upgrade, Ethereum was like a highway often plagued by traffic jams, and after the upgrade, it became a broader smart road. The core change is: from 'competing computing power' to 'competing on savings' - previously, a lot of electricity was consumed by computers for mining, but now users can participate in network maintenance by saving money (staking ETH), which is both energy-efficient and secure.

This upgrade also brought three obvious changes:

Cheaper: Daily transfers and transaction fees (Gas fees) have been significantly reduced; for example, sending an NFT used to cost dozens of yuan, but now it might only cost a few yuan;

Faster: Transaction processing speed has increased, and in the future, it may achieve the ability to process thousands of transactions per second, approaching the response speed of Alipay;

Easier to use: A new 'automatic account deduction' feature has been added, allowing users to pay transaction fees without having to pre-load ETH, similar to WeChat Pay.

These improvements make Ethereum more suitable for everyday users and promote the implementation of more gaming and financial applications. However, the upgrade also faces challenges such as large institutions monopolizing computing power and network stability. Currently, the upgrade has been launched, and the price of ETH has risen in response to the market.