Members of Ethereum The community has set its sights on a new date for the long-awaited blockchain Merge.
Come September 19, the network should merge of his current state of proof of work one-to-one (PoW) blockchain low consumption proof of stake network (point of sale).
“This merger timeline isn’t final, but it’s extremely exciting to see it come to fruition,” tweeted Beacon Chain Community Manager superphiz.eth. “Please consider this as a planning timeline and pay attention to official announcements!”
The Beacon Chain is the PoS version of Ethereum currently running alongside the PoW-based mainnet. This spear in December 2020, marking the start of the multi-stage upgrade.
The Merge event scheduled for September will effectively move Ethereum activity to the Beacon Chain.
Superphiz.eth has included a more detailed look at next steps, including a final trial run on the latest Ethereum testnet, Goerli. Testnets provide developers with a test environment to test new updates and changes to a blockchain network without risking the network collapsing or causing disruption to users.
Today’s new deadline also follows a recent “shade fork,” which Ethereum developer Marius van der Wijden called “another step in the right direction.”
Last week another testnet called Sepolia also passed tested a similar meltdown event.
Merger and Ethereum 2.0
The merger will see Ethereum enter a new era, leaving behind one consensus mechanism and beginning another.
Instead of miners around the world confirming transactions and minting new blocks, so-called validators will do the same. A validator, at least in the Ethereum network, refers to an entity that has deposited a minimum of 32 Ethereum on the Beacon Chain.
This participation keeps the entity economically aligned to continue to diligently verify transactions; if they do not, part of this deposit may be withdrawn from them. Conversely, if they continue to maintain high availability and prevent fraudulent activity, validators can earn additional Ethereum for their services.
Other popular PoS-based networks include Solana, avalanche, Cosmos, and many others. However, none are as popular as Ethereum in terms of investor and developer activity.
DeFi Llama, a data tracking platform for all things decentralized finance, noted that Ethereum drives over 62% of all activity in this space.
In terms of market capitalization, it is also the second largest behind none other than Bitcoin.
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