The new Proof of Work (PoW) ethereum testnet has successfully merged in upgrading to full Proof of Stake (PoS).
“It seems to have worked. Post-merge blocks are being produced by validators, and they contain transactions,” Tim Beiko, an ethereum developer, said.
During a livestream of the event developers confirmed that nodes were taking instructions from an RPC call, the stakers, rather than the miners.
The Geth node will give some green text to say as much, devs stated, confirming the transition from miners to stakers.
Epochs are also finalizing with a participation rate above 98%. “The network is stable, with >2/3rd of validators correctly finalizing,” Beiko said although one client isn’t producing blocks consistently with devs looking into the issue, but it doesn’t seem to be affecting the network.
Making the merge overall successful on first try in this sort of public testnet after numerous tests on devnets.
There are already more than 106,000 validators on the testnet, as well as 3.4 million testnet eth securing the network.
That high participation rate is due to this being the closest thing to the real thing until the actual launch as it is very much a replica of the current ethereum PoW network, the Beacon chain, and the transition to full on stake.
Seeing it all go well suggests the live launch is probable this June or July when ethereum becomes deflationary based on current data as the burning is running at 2,500 eth a day while the daily staking rewards are about ?1,500.
That means 1,000 eth a day will be taken out of total circulation starting this summer if the testnet continues to perform well, giving ethereum an ‘inflation’ rate of -0.5% a year.
In total therefore new supply will fall by more than 100% based on current data, from about $36 million a day to a daily ‘buyback’ of about $2.5 million worth of eth everyday.
In addition the network will become very environmentally friendly due to a 99.95% reduction of energy demand as GPUs will no longer be needed to secure the network, nor any other extra hardware.
Corporate investors therefore will have the greenlight where eth is concerned if they are currently restricted by environmental investment criteria.
And this all has now pretty much began with the current PoW ethereum network entering its final days as it countdowns towards its transformation to Proof of Stake after five years of intense full on development towards that goal.
