Ethereum’s merge from a Proof-of-Work (PoW) consensus to a Proof-of-Stake (PoS) is set to happen in August this year.
What Is The Merge?
Ethereum’s mainnet, the main public Ethereum blockchain, runs a PoW consensus mechanism. Using PoW has flaws with scalability and excessive energy consumption. Therefore the Ethereum developers decided that switching to a PoS consensus would be a better bet for the blockchain.
The merge describes when the Beacon Chain, which introduced PoS to the Ethereum blockchain, will merge with the mainnet switching the entire blockchain from PoW to PoS.
Is The Merge Set For August?
- The Merge being set for August was first announced by Ethereum core developer, Preston Van Loon. Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin confirmed this statement at the ETH Shanghai Web 3.0 Developer Summit. Although he added that this date may be delayed.
- “If there are no problems then the merge will happen in August, but of course, there’s always a risk of problems. There’s also a risk of delays. And so September is possible and October is possible as well,” Buterin stated.
- The delays may come from the “difficulty bomb”, an intentional piece of coding that encourages developers to work on the proof-of-stake consensus. The difficulty bomb slows down the network, it currently gets “diffused” before it goes off, but once the merge takes place it will explode leaving an immense increase in mining difficulty, discouraging the use of PoW on the new PoS system.
- Van Loon stated that “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.”
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