After developers reached an agreement on a tentative date for Merge, Ethereum’s transition from proof-of-stake to proof-of is getting closer.
After core developers announced a Sept. 15 tentative Merge date, the Ethereum Merge could be closer than expected. This will see the blockchain transition from proof of-stake (PoS).
The Ethereum mainnet Merge date came into view after core developers such as Tim Beiko and Prysmatic Labs co-founder Terence Tsao agreed in a Thursda developer call it would be when Total Terminal Difficulty (TTD) hits 58750000000000000000000.
This was confirmed by Beiko in a GitHub posting titled “Tentative Mainnet TTD,” on Thursday.
Although the exact date and time could change, the success of the testnet mergers could indicate that Ethereum’s mainnet will move to PoS consensus without any problems next month.
The official schedule for the new year is at least three days ahead of Tim Beiko, Ethereum core developer, who predicted it in Sep. 19.
Tentative Mainnet TTD 👇
— terence.eth 🦇🔊 (@terencechain) August 11, 2022
58750000000000000000000
Note: nothing is final until it's in client release, so do expect changes last minute due to unforeseen circumstances https://t.co/PQ0YOKpk1u
This long number is known as the Total Terminal Difficulty (TTD), which specifies the end of proof, and when proof will start. TTD refers to the difficulty of the final block before PoS transition.
The Merge cannot be completed until the Bellatrix fork has been performed . This will enable clients to run the consensus layer software. This is expected to take place on Sep. 6, approximately 10 days before Merge.
Friday’s transition to PoS was completed by the Goerli testnet . This is after the Sepolia merge of July 7th and Ropsten of June 9.
The Merge will see the Ethereum network’s energy consumption drop by more than 99.99%. It will resist attacks on the network, and its scalability will increase.
PoW miners to keep on
There are rumors that Ether ( ETH), miners who rely heavily on income from PoW block rewards will continue to run the original PoW version Ethereum to maximize their earning potential.
Bitcoin ( Bitcoin), ETH miner, crypto angel investor Chandler Guo is leading a charge for miners that fork the Ethereum network in order to create an Ethereum PoW chain (ETHW). Guo appears to believe that Ethereum has enough room for two types and has retweeted several opinions in support of the idea.
He pledged to release the code to perform an ETH PoW Fork. This bypasses the difficulty bomb. It is a mechanism that substantially reduces the block reward to miners to discourage them from producing more blocks. The mainnet merge will be preceded by the difficulty bomb.
Related: Would it be foolish to predict a huge Ethereum price rise pre- and/or post-Merge.
ETHW is trading down 7.5% over the past day to $72.5 on Poloniex. ETH has gained 1.5% in the last 24 hours to $1881.54, according to CoinGecko.
