Between September 14th and September 15th, the Paris upgrade will be completed. The first block under the proof-of stake mechanism will be produced within thirteen minutes. We could then see the Surge/Verge, Purge, Purge, and Splurge once The Merge has been completed.
The long-awaited Bellatrix upgrade finally took place on Tuesday, 11:34 UTC. The upgrade to the hard fork introduced an “execution Payload” parameter that allows validators to create mainnet blocks. This parameter was previously missing from the Beacon Chain.
It seems to have been a smooth operation. Validators added a little graffiti to the blockchain, “Welcome To The New Beginning.”
The Ethereum Foundation describes The Merge as “changing an engine on rocket ship mid-flight.” It is therefore “designed to be done without the need to pause anything during switching.
However, changing the engine is a two-step procedure. Bellatrix is only the first step, and is the preparation for the main part. Paris is the second and final step.
The Bellatrix upgrade is preparing the Beacon Chain, the consensus layer, to be merged into the Ethereum mainnet. This upgrade will take place when the Paris upgrade takes place. The execution layer will change from proof of work into proof of stake when Paris is completed.
When does the ethereum merge happen?
Between September 10th and September 20th, the Paris upgrade will be completed. This will occur when you reach the specified Total Difficulty threshold (also known as Terminal Total Difficulty)
As per the Ethereum Foundation, TTD “is a cumulative measure of the total mining power that has gone into building the chain,” and Paris will trigger when it hits 58,750,000,000,000,000,000,000.
Simply put, proof of stake will produce the next block if the difficulty of mining a particular block is at or above this level. The Paris upgrade will see the first proof-of-stake block completed in 13 minutes.
Blocks will be built using proof of work in one block and then built by proof of stake in another, the Ethereum Foundation stated.
The exact time that the TTD is reached depends on Ethereum hash power following Bellatrix. This is why it is difficult to pinpoint a date on The Merge. The TTD was chosen by Ethereum developers to reach September 15, knowing that the actual date could fluctuate by a few more days.
Technically, the successful Paris upgrade is The Merge’s completion.
What happens after the Merge?
After The Merge is completed, there are still a few things to do in relation to the move towards proof of stake
Investors will be able to retake their staked ether. They will need to wait for the Shanghai upgrade, which is the “next major upgrade” after the Merge. The Beacon Chain’s newly issued ETH will be locked and illiquid for six to twelve more months.
Vitalik Buterin, Ethereum’s co-founder, has also laid out a long-term vision of the future.
Although there is still much speculation about the future upgrades, he has already given them catchy names. We could soon see the Surge (Verge), Purge (Purge) and Splurge once The Merge is complete.
“The Merge proves that stake is there. “The Surge is sharding and The Verge are Verkle Trees. The Purge is things such as state expiry or deleting old history. The Splurge, on the other hand, is just all the fun stuff,” Buterin stated at the Ethereum Community Conference in France.
Future upgrades will address some of the major issues that have plagued Ethereum for years, such as scaling. These updates may take a while. It is estimated that Ethereum “complete” could take up to six years
