Top cryptocurrency news: Ethereum developers move up the date for Merge: Coming sooner

12-Aug-2022 By: Shikha Jha

The Ethereum Merge may happen sooner than expected, with core developers announcing a possible Merge date of September 15, when the blockchain will transition to Proof-of-Stake (PoS).

The Ethereum mainnet Merge date became clear when key developers including Tim Beiko and Prysmatic Labs co-founder Terence Tsao agreed on an August 11 developer call that it would happen when Total Terminal Difficulty (TTD) reached 58750000000000000000000.

While the exact date and TTD are still susceptible to change, the success of the numerous testnet merges may be a promising indicator that the Ethereum mainnet will smoothly migrate to Proof-of-Stake (PoS) consensus next month.

The new official timeline is at least three days early than Ethereum core developer Tim Beiko's previous prediction of September 19.

The lengthy number provided is known as the Total Terminal Difficulty (TTD), and it specifies when Proof-of-Work (PoW) will end and Proof-of-Stake (PoS) will begin. The TTD is the total difficulty required for the last block to be mined before the transition to PoS.

Before the Merge can be completed, the Bellatrix fork, which will develop the software required for clients to execute the consensus layer, must be performed. This is set to take place on September 6, around 10 days before the Merge.

On August 12, the Goerli testnet became the only remaining testnet to successfully complete its own PoS transition, following the Sepolia merge on July 7 and Ropsten on June 9.

PoW miners to hold on

However, there are rumors that Ether (ETH) miners, many of whom rely on the income generated by PoW block rewards, will continue to use the old PoW version of Ethereum to maximize their earnings.

Chandler Guo, a BTC and ETH miner and crypto angel investor, is driving the campaign for miners to fork the Ethereum network to create an ETH PoW (ETHW) chain. Guo seems to believe that there is enough capacity in the industry for two forms of Ethereum to exist, and has retweeted a number of comments in support of the idea.

He has promised to share the code required to make an ETH PoW fork that avoids the difficulty bomb, a technique that dramatically decreases the block reward for miners in order to disincentivize them from attempting to generate any more blocks. The difficulty bomb will take place right before the mainnet merging.

ETHW is now trading at $72.5, a 7.5% decrease from the previous day. Meanwhile, according to CoinGabbar, ETH has increased 0.6% in the last 24 hours and is currently trading at $1,894.

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