The past week will remain etched in Crypto history as one of the most awaited ones. The Ethereum merge finally went down super-smoothly, and we can say that the airplane is running fine after switching engines mid-flight.

The theme for the cover of issue 105 was decided early on as it was of utmost importance. Of course, the question was how are we going to depict this event. At this point, there had already been several depictions of the event in predictable ways through memes. We decided to bring -like we always do- a twist to this depiction. What was the merge, more than everything? A victory, over several odds that could have gone drastically wrong.

How can we show victory? Coat of arms, suggested Dudly and that was it. It was an ideal concept to show the merge in all its glory. We took to the sketch board to choose the elements such that it signifies some facet of Ethereum. As we had chosen the Moebius style for ETH covers that was once again the style for 105. We decided that we can show the different forks, the two pandas and a giant ethereum joining together to become one, and much more powerful than ever.  

If you look close you can see the major forks:  the crown that signifies Bysantine; floral for Serenity; domes for Istanbul; the crosses  for Constantinople; red hot etched dragons for Dragon; ice spikes for Ice Age. Beside the two Panda’s one either sid you can see two kids who represent the degens who had went all-in on ETH hoping it wont fail them. Also, we have to be honest that we couldn’t omit Vitalik’s giant egg plant.

Another interesting reference in the cover are numbers on the banner at the bottom. On the left side, you see the block number for the merge and on the right side is the exact time at which it took place in epoch time or Unix time system. It is the number of seconds that have elapsed since the Unix epoch, excluding leap seconds. The Unix epoch is 00:00:00 UTC on 1 January 1970. 

Well, the merge took place happily but the market continues to take hits from macro as see red candles light around us. Hopefully we won’t have to bring back a bear themed cover for the next issue. With high hopes, and unhindered faith in crypto we continue, frens. See y’all next week!