According to a new analysis from the Ethereum Enterprise Alliance (EEA), the Ethereum ecosystem has evolved to the point where companies may utilise the network to address real-world issues.
The paper highlights how the Ethereum network has developed to become one of the most valuable public blockchains, with use cases ranging from supply chain management to payment systems used by organisations such as Visa and PayPal.

Despite this, the EEA research notes that the fast expansion of the Ethereum ecosystem has produced a number of issues for businesses, particularly in terms of energy consumption, scalability, and privacy. The paper claims that sustainability, along with transaction costs, was mentioned as one of the key concerns in respect to adopting the Ethereum Mainnet. According to the survey, the openness associated with a public blockchain such as Ethereum has been a barrier for organisations seeking data security and trust.

As a result, upgrades like sharding and layer-2 (L2) scalability solutions are still essential for businesses that use the Ethereum network. However, the complexity of such solutions continues to be challenging for businesses to traverse. For example, according to the EEA research, “many layer 2 solutions and sidechains are very new initiatives, with relatively new technology.”

However, industry analysts expect that the Ethereum Merge, slated for September 14, would certainly boost business usage. According to Paul Brody, global blockchain head at EY, although the Merge will not impact most commercial use cases now in use, it will transform how companies see Ethereum.

Ivan Brakrac, senior decentralised finance market strategist at ConsenSys, told Cointelegraph that although the Merge does not immediately boost scalability, a series of anticipated Ethereum updates will address scalability over the next several years.

For example, Brakrac explained that switching the Ethereum network from proof-of-work (PoW) to proof-of-stake (PoS) was the first step toward enabling “shard chains.” As previously reported by Cointelegraph, sharding is the process of separating a database, or in this instance, the blockchain, into smaller chains known as shards.

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