Ethereum Difficulty Bomb Delayed Again, But Network Adoption Is Still Growing

Ethereum network developers have decided to delay the difficulty bomb, an important step toward the much-anticipated "merge" upgrade of layer-1 blockchains.

According to core developer Tim Beiko in a tweet on Sunday, they set the delay at two months to "ensure we check all the data before choosing the exact delay and deployment time".

The difficulty bomb will prevent miners from running their mining machines by disincentivizing them from mining as the Ethereum network transitions from proof-of-work (PoW) to proof-of-stake (PoS).

It greatly increases the difficulty for miners to verify transactions on the network, thereby reducing the profitability of PoW miners. Eventually, physical miners will not be able to validate blocks. The difficulty bomb was added to the code in 2016 as part of a plan to merge into the consensus layer (formerly known as Eth2).

It is estimated that the transition to PoS will reduce the energy requirements of the Ethereum network by up to 99.9%. Other PoS networks, such as Polygon and Fantom Opera, have negligible power requirements compared to PoW networks.

While Beiko didn't mention this, postponing the difficulty bomb could lead to further delays in the merger itself. The merger is currently expected to take place in August 2022.

The Ropsten testnet on ethereum successfully merged to PoS on Friday, with developers calling it the "first rehearsal" for a real merger.

Ethereum adoption is still growing

Despite the ongoing bearish sentiment in the crypto market, the Ethereum user base remains strong. Since December 2020, daily transaction volume on the Ethereum network has remained above 1 million in all but one day. By measuring daily transactions, it is easy and concise to understand the general load handled by the network.

Ethereum’s daily transactions since 2015

Every month, the number of unique addresses on Ethereum is still increasing dramatically. The number of unique wallets has never slowed down since the first surge in December 2017. Currently, there are approximately 198 million unique wallets on Ethereum, a 14.5-fold increase since December 7, 2017.

Along with most other cryptocurrencies, ETH has lost 6.8% in price over the past 24 hours to trade at $1,360, according to data from CoinGecko.