Ethereum is about to undergo a major upgrade, and the testnet will be merged in June

On Monday, ethereum DevOps engineer Parathi Jayanathi issued a pull request in GitHub's eth-clients repository, showing the configuration code used to upgrade the testnet.

Last month, developers working on the merge (which would convert it from a proof-of-work model to a proof-of-stake consensus model) began testing how the switch would work on shadow forks.

Two days later, things looked less rosy when Ethereum Foundation developer Tim Beiko tweeted that the upgrade had been pushed back to the second half of 2022.

"It won't be June, but it could be in the next few months," he wrote in a tweet. “There’s no firm date yet, but we’re definitely in the final stages of ethereum [proof-of-work].”

The merger will mean the end of Proof-of-Work mining on the Ethereum network. Mining involves using high-end, energy-intensive computers to solve complex mathematical puzzles, currently how new ETH tokens are created and transactions are validated on the network. Once the network switches to proof-of-stake, "miners" will be replaced by "validators" who stake ETH to validate and secure the network, and are rewarded in ETH for doing so.

This is expected to significantly reduce the energy consumed by the Ethereum blockchain. It will also cut new ETH issuance by roughly 90%, which market analysts believe could add considerable deflationary pressure on ethereum if demand for the asset remains high.

Ethereum Foundation Boosts Bug Bounties

As it prepares to upgrade its mainnet, the Ethereum Foundation has boosted the rewards for its bug bounty program launched in 2021. The program offers rewards in the form of a tiered system, providing the greatest rewards for potentially high-impact and high-risk critical vulnerabilities.

It also now incorporates the execution layer (Eth1) and the consensus layer (Eth2) which used to be two separate programs. Bug bounty hunters can now earn up to $250,000 (paid in Ethereum or DAI) for discovering vulnerabilities within the scope of the program.

The plan has raised the amount from $250,000 to $500,000 to ensure the merger doesn't create holes in a network that handles billions of dollars in transactions every day. As of Wednesday, ether was trading at $1,968.22, with a market capitalization of $238 billion, according to CoinMarketCap.

Currently, for upgrade vulnerabilities that have been released on the public testnet or planned to be released on the Ethereum mainnet, the maximum bounty in Ethereum has been doubled, capped at $500,000.

“Multiple efforts have been undertaken by the client team and the community to further add knowledge and expertise to both layers,” developer Fredrik Svantes wrote in an Ethereum Foundation blog post on Monday. “The Unified Bounty Program will further increase recognition and visibility and coordinated efforts to mitigate vulnerabilities.”

Original: https://decrypt.co/100823/ethereum-major-upgrade-testnet-merge-june