Anticipation and excitement are building in the Ethereum community as more clarity around the merge emerges. Ethereum developers have now agreed to a tentative date for the mainnet merge, which could be sooner than expected, seeing the Ethereum blockchain finally transition to Proof-of-Stake.
Tentative Date Announced
Ethereum core developers have locked in the 15th of September, 2022, as the tentative date on which the blockchain will transition to Proof-of-Stake. This means that the merge will happen sooner than expected as a result of the successful test on the Georli testnet, completed on Wednesday.
Core Ethereum developers confirmed the date, including Tim Beiko and Terence Tsao, Co-founder of Prysmatic Labs, who agreed in an 11th August developer call that it (merge) would be when Total Terminal Difficulty (TTD) hits 58750000000000000000000. This was later confirmed in a post on Github titled tentative mainnet TTD.
Date Could Still Change
The possibility that the exact date and TTD could be changed still remains, the success of the testnet merges carried out so far are a good indication that Ethereum’s mainnet is finally ready to transition to the Proof-of-Stake consensus mechanism without any significant hurdles. The new timeline is three days earlier than the initially planned date of the 19th of September, which core developer Tim Beiko promised.
“Tentative Mainnet TTD 58750000000000000000000 Note: nothing is final until it’s in client release, so do expect changes last minute due to unforeseen circumstances.”
Bellatrix: Setting The Stage For The End Of Proof-of-Work
Once the Total Terminal Difficulty hits 58750000000000000000000, it will mark the end of Proof-of-Work on the Ethereum blockchain and signal the official introduction of Proof-of-Stake. The TTD refers to the total difficulty required to mine the final block before the transition to PoS. However, before the merge is executed and completed, Ethereum developers will need to perform the Bellatrix hard fork, which will implement the necessary software updates required for clients to run the new consensus layer.
The hard fork is scheduled for the 6th of September, just under ten days before the official merge. The journey to the merge has been long for Ethereum and its developers, with the Georli testnet becoming the final testnet to switch to the Proof-of-Stake consensus mechanism successfully. The Georli testnet merge followed the successful transitions of the Sepolia merge and the Ropsten testnet merge.
Rumblings Of Discontent?
However, there are some seeds of discord with Ethereum miners who rely on Proof-of-Work and its income. These Proof-of-Work miners are determined to continue using the Proof-of-Work consensus mechanism for Ethereum and maintain their flow of income. Chandler Guo, BTC, and ETH miner, a proponent of Proof-of-work and a crypto angel investor, is at the forefront of the movement and is leading the charge for PoW miners to initiate a hard fork of Ethereum and create a Proof-of-Work chain. Guo is a proponent of the theory that the crypto space is big enough for two Ethereums to exist and has tweeted several opinions on Twitter in support of his views.
Guo is determined to release the necessary code to perform a hard fork that would bypass the difficulty bomb. This mechanism significantly reduces block rewards for miners in an effort to prevent them from producing new blocks.
