According to Vitalik Buterin, the co-founder of the Ethereum network, the much-anticipated software update of the Ethereum blockchain, which is referred to in the cryptocurrency industry as the Merge, is now expected to take place around September 13 to September 15.
The Merge signifies a movement in the manner that Ether tokens are generated and payments are verified, away from mining blocks utilizing challenging computational puzzles following the proof-of-work technique and toward the proof-of-stake approach. The proof-of-work method required miners to solve increasingly difficult problems to get new blocks. Holders of Ether may sign up to verify transactions on Ethereum using the POS mechanism, which is based on stashes of locked up tokens in their possession.
Buterin said that the proof-of-work version of Ethereum only has a roughly “fixed amount” of mining slots after the last test stage of the Merge known as Goerli earlier this week. Goerli was known as the name of the test stage. Because of this, engineers now have a better idea of when the formal network update will likely get underway.
An earlier projection suggested that the date would fall between September 15 and September 20. Next week, there will be another meeting with the engineers working on Ethereum to iron out any last-minute kinks in the Merge. During this call, a specific date will be decided upon and hammered out.
The Bellatrix hard fork
On the Ethereum blockchain, the long-awaited update to Ethereum 2.0 is set to get underway. Ethereum 2.0 refers to the method by which the cryptocurrency Ethereum (ETH) will transition from operating on a proof-of-work (PoW) basis to operating on a proof-of-stake (PoS) basis through a hard fork, also known as a separation process. Even though the Ethereum Foundation does not make use of the phrase “Ethereum 2.0,” the word is often used in the industry to make things easier to understand.
A Bellatrix upgrade for ETH is slated for today, the day before the final merge. At that time, the Ethereum Epoch value on the proof-of-stake chain is expected to increase to 144,896. This will occur before the final merge. According to the Ethereum Foundation, one epoch is the amount of time that must pass to mine 30,000 blocks.
The most recent upgrade to Bellatrix is required for “the Merge” to be carried out without a hitch. This upgrade is the last one that will take place before the Paris Upgrade, which will take place after “the Merge.” It brings together the proof-of-stake chain and the current execution layer (current proof-of-work).
Mining on the Ethereum Blockchain will be rendered obsolete as a result of the Paris Upgrade, which will also herald the transition from a proof-of-work validation system to a proof-of-stake system design.
An outline of the most recent changes to Ethereum
In the same way that Bitcoin was constructed, the Ethereum network was built using the proof-of-work (PoW) method. This suggests that mining, a process that uses a substantial amount of energy, is necessary for the production of Ethereum (ETH) coins.
To make the transition to a proof-of-stake (PoS) paradigm, however, various measures were made in preparation for the introduction of Ethereum 2.0 in 2020. The purpose of this project is to improve the speed, efficiency, and scalability of the Ethereum network to facilitate the execution of a greater number of transactions in parallel.
What will happen after The Merge?
At the beginning of this year, Ethereum’s original developer, Vitalik Buterin, assigned a development progress rating of 50% to the project. In addition to this appraisal, he included a list of the many stages, such as merging, surge, verge, and others, that Ethereum must go through to reach 100%.
The update to Bellatrix is slated to take place today. As part of this process, the Beacon Chain will be integrated with the Ethereum mainnet, and the consensus method will be converted entirely from proof-of-work to proof-of-stake.
The zk-rollups layer 2 scaling solution will need to be implemented as the next stage of the surge. To aggregate and carry out several transactions all at once, a technique known as rollup makes use of an Ethereum sidechain.
