Ethereum’s transition from a Proof-of-Work mechanism to a Proof-of-Stake consensus is another step closer after The Merge on Ropsten took place on Wednesday. The test was largely successful although a few bugs were spotted.
The Ropsten network just merged!
One of the last testnets until we merge on the #Ethereum mainnet??https://t.co/3lvlUfcAT4pic.twitter.com/knd1IBlD8A
— Bitfly (@etherchain_org) June 8, 2022
According to a core developer on Twitter, a few clients experienced timeouts during block production and failed to validate transactions. Fixes for the issue are already in the works, per tweets reposted by Tim Beiko.
ETH developers also asked the community to contribute to the process by keeping an eye out for bugs while tests and monitoring continue on Ropsten.
We're going to monitor the chain over the next few weeks to make sure no client pairs go out of sync. We'd hope that community members raise alarms if they see dapps/tooling not work as expected! Sync nodes in weird ways to find bugs! Send txs!
Help with #TestingTheMerge
— parithosh | ???????? (@parithosh_j) June 8, 2022
Ropsten is one of the oldest testnets on the Ethereum network and The Merge simulation on the testnet represents a significant moment as developers move closer to a mainnet launch. During the test, Ropsten’s code and code from the Beacon chain were combined to determine if block production and validation would run smoothly during the transition.
The Beacon chain is a sister chain that runs parallel to the main Ethereum network and leverages the optimized PoS consensus layer.
Moving forward, The Merge is scheduled to happen on two key public testnets ahead of the mainnet launch expected to happen between August and October 2022. Tests on Goerli and Sepolia are scheduled to happen within the next few weeks.
Other testnets like will shut down by end of the year, per Tim Beiko’s tweet.
With Ropsten now on PoS, friendly reminder that many testnets will be shut down by EOY:
– Kiln: shut down soon after mainnet merge ?
– Rinkeby: won't be merged, shut down by EOY ?
– Ropsten: merged today, shut down by EOY ?
Goerli & Sepolia will be maintained post-merge ??
— Tim Beiko | timbeiko.eth ?? (@TimBeiko) June 8, 2022
Ethereum (ETH) Trading Under $2K Despite Successful Merge On Key Testnet
Notably, ETH is below $2,000 regardless of the progress made towards actualizing a watershed moment in Ethereum’s history. In an interview with Blockworks, Geode Finance CEO Simon Furlong opined that users and investors might not fully understand the implications The Merge could have for Ethereum as an asset.
The switch to PoS is expected to drastically cut down the network’s enemy consumption and finally mitigate high gas fees, a critical issue closely associated with ETH’s chain.
Also, the network’s transaction capacity should shoot up exponentially to match or exceed the throughput boasted by other PoS blockchains like Solana.