Ethereum Co-Founder Hints That The Merge Could Experience A Delay

The long-awaited Ethereum transition to proof-of-stake (PoS) has been pushed back again and again. According to the latest reports, the date has finally been fixed to August, this year. Ethereum Co-Founder Vitalik Buterin recently attended the ETH Shanghai Web 3.0 Developer Summit.

In that particular event, he mentioned that the PoS transition is scheduled to go live on Ethereum’s testnet Ropsten on June 8, next month.

Preston Van Loon, a core developer of the Ethereum network, has also stated at the Permissionless conference that the transition referred to as The Merge is set to happen in August if everything goes according to plan.

Vitalik Buterin stated at the Ethereum Summit that,

This will be a major test, larger than any of the tests that we have done before, Taking a large existing test network with many applications with proof-of-work, moving into proof-of-stake

Van Loon mentioned in the Permissionless conference that,

As far as we know, if everything goes to plan, August — it just makes sense. If we don’t have to move (the difficulty bomb), let’s do it as soon as we can.

Expected Delays Are A Possibility Says Ethereum Co-Founder

Vitalik Buterin has confirmed that The Merge is all set to occur in the month of August this year. He also made a point to emphasise on the aspect of a delay.

He quoted,

But of course, there’s always a risk of problems. There’s also a risk of delays. And so September is possible and October is possible as well.

Ethereum researcher also passed corresponding statement regarding a chance of delay. Justin Drake mentioned that the team is making sure that the Merge goes according to the timeline as it is on the top of the priority list.

He also stressed on a “strong desire to make this happen before difficulty bomb in August.” The “difficulty bomb” is referred to the program that’s coded into the Ethereum blockchain. This program is intended to slow down the network and was created to encourage a shift to the PoS consensus.

What the code does is, it makes it tough for the miners to operate the proof-of-work (PoW) consensus mechanism once The Merge has occurred.

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What Follows The Merge Then?

The Merge happens to be the first of Ethereum’s major upgrades. This comes after their London upgrade. After The Merge, Ethereum has lined up The Surge, The Verge, The Purge and finally The Splurge.

The Surge is concerned with scaling and its improvements, reportedly. Through sharding techniques this is designed to happen. Next comes The Verge which applies Verkle trees to encourage statelessness and by using the Merkle proof upgrade.

After that The Purge is responsible to bring the addition of the EVM simplification track along with erasing historical data and technical debt. After that The Surge which is the final stage of the roadmap will take care of “miscellaneous” and “important extras”.

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