Core Ethereum developer Preston Van Loon believes that the network’s much-awaited transition to proof-of-stake (PoS) will most probably take place in August. Ethereum’s long-awaited migration to the PoS consensus mechanism that has been pushed back repeatedly in the past seems set to happen in August, hopefully.
Loon told attendees at the Permissionless conference that this transition known as the Merge would happen sometime in August in case everything works out according to plan. He also told the attendees that the Ethereum team was aiming to make this transition before the so-called “difficulty bomb” would degrade the entire network as scheduled.
“As far as we know, if everything goes to plan, August—it just makes sense. If we don’t have to move [the difficulty bomb], let’s do it as soon as we can.”
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 (@benjicohen421) May 19, 2022
Echoing the sentiment was fellow Ethereum researcher Justin Drake who said that guaranteeing the Merge went ahead rapidly was a top priority, sharing his huge desire to make this happen before the difficulty bomb in August.
The ‘difficulty bomb’ is the program coded into the Ethereum blockchain that is meant to intentionally slow down the network. It was designed to encourage the transition to proof-of-stake by making it more challenging for the miners to remain behind on the proof-of-work (PoW) chain after the Merge.
Ethereum Transition Has Been Delayed Frequently
On April 11, 2022, Ethereum developer Tim Beiko said that The Merge had once more been delayed. Despite its successful “shadow fork test”, Beiko insisted that The Merge would not be implemented in June as scheduled. Based on the statement by Beiko, developers have to act speedily to avoid the difficulty bomb, otherwise, they will have to introduce another update to delay the bomb.
Buy Bitcoin Now“If client developers do not think they can deploy The Merge to mainnet before block times are slowed too much, it will need to be delayed again.”
The recommitment to the timeline arises in the wake of this week’s news the Ethereum network will achieve a ‘huge testing milestone,’ with the Ropsten testnet Merge expected to be conducted on June 8. Notably, the Ropsten testnet Merge will see the PoW test network integrated with a new PoS consensus layer testnet.
It is designed to simulate what will happen once the real Merge between Ethereum and the Beacon Chain eventually happens and it becomes a PoS network.
In case The Merge is implemented successfully in August, the last landmark on the roadmap for Ethereum, previously known as Eth2, is the sharded chains upgrade that is expected to go live in early 2023. But until that happens, the network will continue using layer-2 networks like Optimism and Polygon to handle high transaction volumes and scalability.
