On August 5, Ethereum London hard fork was launched, changing the way miners get rewards.
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The network's new fee-burning mechanism, called Ethereum Improvement Proposal (EIP-1559) has removed around $49 M in Ether from circulation. EIP 1559 came to replace Ethereum's previous fee-calculation mechanism with an algorithmically set one.Now, users need to bid how much they're willing to pay a miner to pick their transaction. The process is carried out automatically. A set fee amount varies depending on how busy the network is.
Along with this, EIP-1559 brought another change. That is burning some percentage of every transaction. As a result, the supply of Ether tokens will be decreased, boosting the price.
The major Ethereum 2.0 upgrade suggests switching from Proof-of-Work mining to Proof-of-Stake. The next step will be the merge of Ethereum's mainnet to the Ethereum 2.0 beacon chain.
The merge is a turning point for Ethereum staking as well. Currently, over 6.5 M Ethers worth about $20 B are staked in ETH 2.0. Ether's maximum supply is unlimited. However, the token has an annual maximum supply of 18 million ETH. The token's circulating supply at the moment is 117,030,786.06.