Ethereum just finished its last dress rehearsal for the Merge event scheduled for September.
Ethereum has entered the final stages in preparations for the highly-anticipated merge.
This will take place after Goerli (the network’s third testnet) successfully switched to a Proof-of-stake consensus algorithm on Wednesday evening. ETH rose 14% in 24 hour time, buoyed largely by the Goerli merger.
The Ropsten successfully switched to PoS earlier this summer. The Sepolia made a similar transition at the beginning July.
The Goerli testnet merger was announced in July. It took place in two phases. They began with the required Bellatrix upgrade, which occurred on August 4. Paris was the second step. It was activated today when the Terminal Total Difficulty on the Goerli chains reached 10,790,000.
The second phase of the upgrade saw execution layer clients transition to proof-ofstake. A validator on Beacon Chain, a PoS network that runs alongside Ethereum’s mainnet produced the next block.
Goerli is a testnet for Web3 developers that allows them to test their blockchain applications before they launch them on the Ethereum mainnet. It is distinct from Ropsten or Sepolia because it runs on the proof of authority (PoA), rather than the proofof work (PoW) algorithm.
The Goerli merge today differs from early testnet integrations in that node operators had to update both their execution layer clients and consensus layer clients simultaneously.
According to the Ethereum Foundation the Goerli Merge provides users with the last chance to verify that their PoS validators have been correctly configured before the mainnet transition.
It will also serve to test the Ethereum mainnet before it is expected that the Beacon chain will formally merge with Ethereum next month. A soft date of September 19,.
The Merge will be Ethereum’s biggest upgrade since 2015’s launch. It will end the energy-intensive ETH mining process and replace it with a PoS system that is expected to increase the network’s scalability, and make it 99% less environmentally friendly.
It remains to be seen if a smooth merger might help end the current crypto winter.
