Don't Expect The Merge in June, but Developer Says PoW on Ethereum Is in Its "Final Chapter"

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Don't Expect The Merge in June, but Developer Says PoW on Ethereum Is in Its "Final Chapter"

Key highlights:

  • Ethereum developer Tim Beiko says The Merge will not be happening in June
  • While this has caused some disappointment, there no specific deadlines have been set for The Merge so far
  • Currently, developers are testing The Merge on "shadow forks" of Ethereum testnets and mainnet

Ethereum will not go through The Merge in June, developer says

Ethereum enthusiasts that are bracing themselves for The Merge will likely have to wait a bit longer than they expected, with Ethereum developer Tim Beiko saying that it will not happen in June. According to Beiko, it’s likely that The Merge will happen “in the few months after”.

During The Merge, the current Ethereum mainnet will be joined with the Beacon Chain, which coordinates the network’s Proof-of-Stake consensus. Once this happens, the Ethereum network will no longer be using the energy-intensive Proof-of-Work model. The transition to Proof-of-Stake will not immediately result in major scalability improvements for Ethereum, although it will drastically lower the network’s energy footprint. As far as scalability goes, the Ethereum project is banking on sharding and wider adoption and refinement of layer 2 solutions.

Although Ethereum developers have not provided any specific deadlines for when they’re targeting The Merge, June was floating around the Ethereum community as a potential estimate. 

Later, Beiko said he did not expect his tweet stating that The Merge won’t happen in June to get such a strong reaction. Beiko pointed to an Ethereum Roadmap FAQ he authored on Github, where he clarified that there is no official date for The Merge. He explained that before The Merge can happen, Ethereum client teams have to fix implementation bugs found during testing on “shadow forks”. Once clients run smoothly on the shadow forks, existing Ethereum tesnets will go through the merge. This will be the final step before a specific date for The Merge on the Ethereum mainnet is announced:

“Once testnets have successfully upgraded, and remain stable, then a time will be set for the upgrade to happen on the Ethereum mainnet.” 

Ethereum developers have recently started testing The Merge on “shadow forks” of Ethereum testnets and the mainnet, which allow testing under more realistic conditions. This has already allowed them to identify bugs that could have been overlooked otherwise, according to Ethereum developer Marius Van Der Wijden.

Peter has been covering the cryptocurrency and blockchain space since 2017, when he first discovered Bitcoin and Ethereum. Peter's main crypto interests are censorship-resistance, privacy and zero-knowledge tech, although he covers a broad range of crypto-related topics. He is also interested in NFTs as a unique digital medium, especially in the context of generative art.

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