The projects are still working on their goals amid the market downturn, and Ethereum is making progress.
We are just two months away from the long-awaited upgrade to the Ethereum blockchain – Merge.
Ethereum core developer Tim Beiko said on the Ethereum developers’ conference call that the merge date was “tentatively set” for September 19th.
Verify merge date
Previously, Ethereum developers delayed the network’s “difficulty bomb” by about 100 days, providing a baseline estimate for the network’s long-awaited proof-of-stake transition in September. The team explained the delay by confirming how important it is to the stable performance of the merge.
Tricky Bomb is a built-in update that significantly increases the complexity of PoW calculations, encouraging the switch from Proof-of-Work (PoW) to Proof-of-Stake (PoS) consensus. To validate transactions, Ethereum currently uses the PoW mechanism.
Although the timeline is not final, this is the first time the team has provided an accurate estimated arrival time. After a series of shadow forks and several delays, Ethereum supporters see this as a positive sign.
A shadow fork is a type of testnet that focuses on some changes in the implementation of the main event. In preparation for the final merge, Ethereum developers ran a series of test forks that simulated data from the mainnet into a test environment.
The team activated the ninth shadow fork of Ethereum on July 15. Developers are looking at the modifications recently introduced in the Cepolia hard fork, which was successfully merged earlier this month.
Ethereum’s Shadow Forks
The shadow fork will focus on increasing the MEV – max withdrawable value (formerly miner withdrawable value), which refers to the maximum value that can be withdrawn from a block of transactions in excess of the standard block reward and gas fee.
Miners are currently extracting MEVs, but validators will play that role when the network is at stake. In addition to the estimated timeline, the Ethereum developer provided a timeline for upcoming plans.
According to developer @superphiz, the final phase of merge testing on the Goerly Shadow fork is scheduled for August 11th. The date for the full mainnet merge was set as September 19.
Concerns were raised that the issuance of all ETH from the Beacon Chain smart contract would lead to a massive sell-off. To prevent network instability, the developers have confirmed that it will be released in batches and will run for months after the merge.
According to Beacon Chain Explorer network records, there are currently over 13 million Ether staked and 408 active validators. These figures are approximately $15.6 billion and account for 10.7% of the total circulating supply.
At the time of writing, the price of Ethereum is up 6% in the last 24 hours.
next steps
As of 2018, a general scaling roadmap for Ethereum was approved, and it is still in use today; It was commonly known as Ethereum 2.0 before it was officially converted to a consensus layer.
As per the plan, Ethereum will transition from PoW to PoS with data sharding, allowing it to process hundreds of millions of transactions per second while maintaining a highly secure and decentralized network.
If the merge is successful, it will be a historic milestone and usher in a new era for the Ethereum blockchain. Despite being known as the most complex and significant update to Ethereum, this major event will not have any impact on the activities of users.
So, what has made this a news headline over the years? This is what happens after the merge.
After the merger, Ethereum developers will be able to focus more on implementing data sharing, which is set to take place between 2023 and 2025.
The merge is expected to reduce Ethereum’s power consumption, cause a slight deflation or inflationary increase in the ETH supply, and provide a higher level of security.
While most people are optimistic about the future of Ethereum after The Merge, many developers are concerned about the long-term growth direction of Ethereum as the blockchain becomes increasingly complex as a result of various major changes.