The Ethereum Foundation has announced an official schedule for the much-awaited Merge. The entire transition is expected to occur between Sept.10 and Sept. 20.
The Ethereum Foundation officially announced the schedule for the long-awaited update dubbed the Merge, which will see the blockchain transition from the current Proof-of-Work (PoW) to the Proof-of-Stake (PoS) model. According to the announcement, the first part of the Merge, known as the Bellatrix upgrade, is scheduled for Sept. 6, while the full transition is due between Sept. 10 and Sept. 20.
The Merge Expected to Take Place Between Sept. 10 and Sept. 20
The schedule for Ethereum’s most important event has been announced. The Ethereum Foundation published a blog post announcing the key dates related to the long-anticipated Merge.
According to the announcement, the Merge “must first be activated on the Beacon Chain with the Bellatrix upgrade,” which is scheduled to happen on Sept. 6. After that, Ethereum’s full transition from PoW to PoS is expected to happen between Sept. 10 and Sept. 20, once the Terminal Total Difficulty (TTD) value triggering The Merge reaches 58750000000000000000000.
“The Merge is a two-step process. The first step is a network upgrade, Bellatrix, on the consensus layer triggered by an epoch height. This is followed by the execution layer’s transition from proof-of-work to proof-of-stake, Paris, triggered by a specific Total Difficulty threshold called the Terminal Total Difficulty (TTD).”
The post explained that the exact date at which TTD reaches the specified value depends on the PoW hash rate. Once reached, a Beacon Chain validator will create the new block, and the final Merge transition will be considered complete once this block is finalized. Under regular circumstances, “this will happen two epochs (or ~13 minutes) after the first post-TTD block is produced!” the blog post said.
The Ethereum Foundation also published a list of client releases that support the Merge on the Ethereum mainnet. However, the team noted that node operators must run both an execution layer (EL) and a consensus layer (CL) client to stay on the network during and after the transition.
The Most Important Crypto Event in 2022
The Merge is now less than a month away and is the biggest development in the crypto industry this year. As already noted, the upgrade will transition Ethereum from PoW to the PoS model, cutting the blockchain’s energy use and carbon emissions by as much as 99%, and significantly improving its scalability and efficiency.
Furthermore, the shift to PoS means Ethereum will stop relying on miners and depend on validators instead. Users can stake ETH to earn a chance to create a block. Based on the stake size, one of the users will be chosen to become a validator.
The world’s second-biggest cryptocurrency has risen to new highs last month ahead of the Merge. At the same time, its gas fees plummeted to the lowest point in more than a year after Ethereum completed the final of the three public testnet merges. However, Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin said the upcoming Merge is not yet priced in last month, despite ETH’s recent jumps.