Ethereum’s Merge Now Has Tentative Dates

During a Consensus Layer call, Ethereum developers discussed potential dates for the long-awaited Merge, as the Ethereum blockchain makes its move to proof-of-stake from proof-of-work.

A document circulated between Ethereum developers during the call that showed that there could be two scenarios for when a mainnet merge might occur.

Before the document was circulated, most of the developers agreed that they would aim to have the Bellatrix upgrade live around Sept. 6, 2022. Bellatrix is the name of the upgrade that will kick off the process of the Merge and set everything in motion.

Then a document circulated that showed a 14-day period between Bellatrix upgrade and the mainnet Merge at a specific total terminal difficulty (TTD). The tentative TTD would be: 58,750,000,000,000,000,000,000. Nothing is final, however, until it’s codified in a client release.

The first scenario on the document showed that Bellatrix would be upgraded on Sept. 1, with the mainnet TTD merging on (or around) Sept. 15. The second scenario would see Bellatrix upgraded on Sept. 6, with mainnet TTD merging on (or around) Sept. 20. Given that the preferred Bellatrix upgrade date is Sept. 6, the second scenario is more likely to happen.

But there was discussion about reaching a compromise among developers, and speeding up the hashrate, meaning that if Bellatrix happens on Sept. 6, the Merge could happen around Sept. 16. Developers agreed that they don’t want the Merge to happen on a weekend, so they will now think it over and re-discuss these dates and estimations next week on their All-Core Developers call.

Revisiting the Goerli testnet merge

At the beginning of the call, developers briefly went over the Goerli testnet merge that occurred early Thursday morning at 01:45 UTC. Developers agreed that it was a successful merge and that the network is healthy, even though the participation rate did drop briefly to 70%; it has since gone back up. Ethereum developer, Parithosh Jayanthi, told CoinDesk why there was a drop in participation:

“The roughly 15-16% drop was due to configuration issues. The rest was in a fork due to two terminal blocks - But the fork resolved after ~128 slots. The other % came back online after the config issue was fixed. Now we’re at 84%.”

For context, since December 2020 Ethereum has been testing transitions to proof-of-stake. Goerli was the last of three public testnets to run through its own merge "dress rehearsal" successfully. The Merge will make Ethereum more energy efficient, as the proof-of-stake protocol reduces energy consumption by 99.95%. This will not be the last project for Ethereum. Following the Merge, Ethereum will tackle scalability issues.

Read more: What Is the Ethereum Merge?