The Ethereum Merge is Set to Happen in Mid-September
After successful trials on Ropsten and Sepolia testnets, Ethereum developers agree to carry out The Merge tentatively on September 19th.
The long-awaited merge finally has a date
During a conference call on last Thursday, Ethereum devs agreed on a date for The Merge. Tim Beiko, the Ethereum developer who runs core protocol meetings, proposed September 19th for the merger and saw no objection to it. Soon after that, one of the devs @superphiz shared the roadmap to the merger in a tweet. From there, he added that the proposed date is tentative and shouldn't be viewed as a hard deadline.
Ethereum's long journey to ETH 2.0
To recap, there are 3 phases for Ethereum to go through before it can transition into ETH 2.0 as shown above. On December 1st, 2020, the team kicked off Phase 0 by launching the Proof-of-Stake (PoS) Beacon Chain. The end goal is to merge the Ethereum Mainnet with Beacon Chain so that it can switch from Proof-of-Work (PoW) consensus to the PoS model. However, this is not an easy feat due to the complexities of code auditing.
After several delays, the team is making more progress this year. The plan is to merge Ethereum's testnets with Beacon Chain, before going for the Ethereum Mainnet. As of writing, Ropsten and Sepolia testnets already completed the merge. This leaves the last testnet, the Goerli network, to undergo the trial in mid-August. If everything goes well, the Ethereum Mainnet will officially merge with Beacon Chain on September 19th. Until then, we're stuck in Phase 0 with years to go before reaching ETH 2.0.
It's good news anyway and it shows
Even so, ETH investors took the news positively. At one point, the native token of Ethereum shot above $1,400, before slightly retracing to around $1,358 as of writing. Will the Ethereum Merge finally take place in mid-September? Looks like we'll have to wait and see!
