the only way the Ethereum would ever accomplish mainstream status is through this merge. Energy consumption will go down by 99% meaning that Ethereum will finally be able to experience mass mainstream adoption.

Some people are really underestimating what this merge means exactly. A lot of people know that it will definitely drive consumption WAY lower, but not many realize that this means Ethereum is going one step forward towards attaining mainstream status.

Aside from the fact that retail companies are pushing all in for eco-friendliness, these companies can’t operate on Ethereum as long as it's PoW.

Of course, we still need to wait for sharding for Ethereum to actually start showing its real efficiency, but there are already enough scaling solutions to compensate for that in my opinion.

These scaling solutions and L2s aren’t playing. Polygon alone has already partnered with so many mainstream traditional companies like Ernst & Young, Dolce & Gabbana, Twitter, Instagram and most importantly Stripe which is a BIG step for crypto as a whole considering Stripe is the 6th largest Fintech company in the world and the 5th most used payment app in the US.

And the fact that this company is using Ethereum (even if it’s through an EVM chain like Polygon) insights a lot of hope that Ethereum is on the right path toward mainstream adoption.