The difficulty-delaying Gray Glacier hard fork went live on Ethereum on Thursday without issue, according to the network’s lead developers.including Tim Beiko of the Ethereum Foundation.
The Sepolia testnet is also going to go through its merge test in the next few days. and it is the second testnet to go through testing before the official merge.
According to Etherscan, the Gray Glacier hard fork was initiated at block number 15,050,000 at approximately 6:54 am EST on Thursday. The hard fork will delay the difficulty bomb by approximately 700,000 blocks or 100 days, giving developers until mid-October to complete the long-awaited merge..
The Ethereum Foundation Community Manager, Tim Beiko, it didn’t take long in noting on Twitter that 20 blocks into the fork, all monitored notes remained in syncstating:
“20 blocks after the fork and it looks good: all monitored nodes except @OpenEthereumOrg, which doesn’t support the fork, are in sync. There are no blocks on the old chain so far!”
The developer of the Ethereum ecosystem Nethermind also confirmed the success of the hard fork on Twitter, adding that the difficulty bomb had been successfully delayed..
Gray Glacier hard fork is successful
Nethermind nodes are fine. Block time will go back down to 13 seconds.
Difficulty bomb delayed pic.twitter.com/NPkZMYhWHn
— Nethermind (@nethermindeth) June 30, 2022
The Gray Glacier hard fork is a hit. Nethermind nodes are fine. The block time will go back down to 13 seconds. Delayed Difficulty Bomb pic.twitter.com/NPkZMYhWHn
The Difficulty Bomb is a mechanism put in place to gradually discourage Ether (ETH) miners from proof-of-work (PoW) mining on Ethereum. before the network’s eventual merger with the proof-of-stake (PoS)-based Beacon chain.
This is done by increasing the difficulty level of the puzzles in the PoW mining algorithm, resulting in longer block times and fewer ETH mining rewards.. The mechanism would also make Fusion significantly more complicated for developers to complete due to its gradual slowdown of block creation.
It was necessary to delay the difficulty bomb, as it would have slowed down the creation of new blocks so much that it would be almost impossible to push new updates to the network.
The difficulty bomb has been delayed multiple times because the merger has suffered numerous delays in recent years. Arrow Glacier’s previous delay occurred in December 2021, delaying the pump to mid-2022.
Sepolia will do a dress rehearsal of the Fusion
Beiko also shared a post on Twitter from the Ethereum Foundation on Thursday announcing that the Sepolia testnet will do a dress rehearsal of the Fusion in the coming days, marking the second of three public testnets to do so:
“After years of working to bring proof-of-stake to Ethereum, we are now well into the final stage of testing: testnet deployments!”
“With Ropsten already transitioned to proof-of-stake and shadow forks continuing regularly, Sepolia is now ready for Fusion. After Sepolia, only Goerli/Prater will have to merge before moving to mainnet.”.
Sepolia, the second of three public testnets, is merging If you run a node on the network, now is the time to upgrade to an EL/CL combo
Hashrate has been volatile, so we may hit TTD over the weekend https://t.co/OfPTWzRqRN
—Tim Beiko | timbeiko.eth (@TimBeiko) June 30, 2022
Sepolia, the second of three public testnets, is merging. If you have a node on the network, now is the time to upgrade it to an EL/CL combo. The exchange rate has been volatile so we may hit the TTD over the weekend. https://t.co/OfPTWzRqRN
On the Ethereum Foundation website, the official Merger is vaguely estimated to take place during Q3/Q4 of this year, and the last post also adds that “the date for the Proof-of-Stake transition of the Ethereum mainnet has not been set”. Any source claiming otherwise is likely a scam. Updates will be posted on this blog.”
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