Vitalik Buterin says the ethereum network's upcoming 'surge' will boost the network's scalability

• Ethereum will become more scalable after the network "surge," Vitalik Buterin said Thursday.
• "Ethereum will be able to process 100,000 transactions per second," the ethereum co-founder told a conference in Paris.

Ethereum will improve upon its scalability after the completion of the so-called surge, co-founder Vitalik Buterin said Thursday.

At the Ethereum Community Conference in Paris, he addressed overall changes coming to the network, which also includes a "merge."

"At the end of this road map, ethereum will be a much more scalable system," said Buterin. "By the end, ethereum will be able to process 100,000 transactions per second."

The long-awaited and widely speculated merge, dubbed "Ethereum 2.0," is meant to transition ethereum from the energy-intensive proof-of-work consensus mechanism to the more efficient proof-of-stake model.

Proof-of-work requires miners to utilize mass amounts of computing power and energy in order to authenticate transactions on the blockchain by solving puzzles. Proof-of-stake, however, is a system built around proof of ownership, where users "stake" their own ether holdings and thus lessen the amount of computing power needed to complete transactions.

The network itself will be 55% complete once the merge concludes, Buterin said, adding that some of the changes to ethereum include updates to its monetary policy and security.

Over the weekend, the Ethereum Foundation's Tim Beiko said the merge could happen the week of September 19.

Ether, the network's native token, is down near 60% from the start of the year, changing hands at $1,510 on Thursday after a broad cryptocurrency rout this year that dragged the total market capitalization below $1 trillion, which has since been regained.