The long-awaited migration of Ethereum to a proof-of-stake (PoS) consensus mechanism that has been delayed time and again, looks set to happen in Augusthopefully.
Preston Van Loon, core developer of the Ethereum network, told Permissionless conference attendees that the transition, known as The Merge, will happen sometime in August if all goes according to plan.
Ethereum core Dev @preston_vanloon just said the eth merge is ready, they are now only testing, and expects the merge to happen in August. packed room @Permissionless are excited about it. great question @TrustlessState. Also on panel @drakefjustin pic.twitter.com/vX4beNatJ5
— Benjamin Cohen (benjicohen.eth) (@benjicohen421) May 19, 2022
Ethereum core developer @preston_vanloon just said that the Ethereum merger is done, that they are just testing now, and that he expects the merger to happen in August. @Permissionless is excited about it. Great question @TrustlessState. Also @drakefjustin will be on the panel
Van Loon told the 5,000 attendees that the team wanted to make the transition before the so-called “difficulty bomb” degraded the network as intended:
“As far as we know, if everything goes according to plan, it will happen in August… it’s the most logical thing to do. If we don’t have to move [la bomba de dificultad]Let’s do it as soon as possible.”
Echoing this sentiment, fellow Ethereum researcher Justin Drake stated that ensuring the Fusion moved forward quickly was a top priority, sharing his “strong desire for this to happen before the difficulty bomb in August.”
The “difficulty bomb” refers to the program encoded in the Ethereum blockchain that intentionally slows down the network. It was designed to encourage the transition to PoS by making it more difficult for miners to stay on the proof-of-work (PoW) chain after The Merger.
On April 11, Ethereum developer Tim Beiko announced that The Fusion had been delayed yet again. Despite a successful “shadow fork test”, Beiko said that The Fusion would not be implemented in June as expected. According to Beiko, the developers must act quickly to avoid the difficulty bomb, otherwise they will have to introduce another update to delay the bomb:
“If client developers don’t think they can get The Fusion out on the mainnet before block times slow down too much, they’ll have to delay it again.”
The new schedule commitment comes in the wake of news this week that the Ethereum network will see a “huge testing milestone” as the Ropsten Testnet Fusion will take place on June 8.. The Ropsten testnet merger will combine the PoW testnet with a new PoS consensus layer testnet. It will simulate what will happen once the actual merger between Ethereum and the Beacon Chain finally takes place and becomes a PoS network.
If the merger goes through successfully in August, the latest milestone on the roadmap for Ethereum, formerly known as Eth2, is the sharded-chain upgrade, which is planned for early 2023. Until then, however, the network will continue to use Layer 2 networks like Polygon and Optimism to handle scalability and high transaction volumes.
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