• According to reports, the Ethereum Merge is scheduled to go live on September 19 if everything goes according to plan.
• The announcement has brought excitement to the Ethereum community, especially key developers and figures.

As part of the plan to transition from the Proof of Work (PoW) to the Proof of Stake (PoS) model, Ethereum has finalized the third and last testnet merge, Goerli. According to reports, the Ethereum Merge is scheduled to go live on September 19 when everything goes according to plan. The announcement has brought excitement to the Ethereum community, especially key developers and figures including podcaster/ETH proponent Anthony Sassano, sassal0x. 

The Goerli testnet has been successfully merged and is now a full Proof of Stake chain.

Next up is (finally) the Ethereum mainnet!!

The Merge is coming.

It is important to note that some minor issues were found in the previous testnets with Ethereum developer Marius van der Wijden observing that two different terminal blocks and several non-updated nodes created confusion on the network. According to him, this slowed down the process slightly but had no major effects on the network. 

The Merge is said to be one of the biggest upgrades in blockchain history. Its successful implementation could help the network conserve energy by more than 99 percent. According to a report by Digiconomist, Ethereum’s PoW model consumes 112 terawatt-hours of electricity per year, which is more than the consumption of Pakistan and the Philippines. The upgrade would also put it in a better position for long-term scalability, security, and sustainability. 

Participation drops after the Ethereum test merge

Christine Kim, a research associate from Galaxy Digital disclosed that there was a decrease in participation after the test Merge. However, it worked.

A successful Merge = chain finalizes. Sure, the participation rate dropped and looks like there may have been an issue with one of the clients but the Merge worked. We’ll likely see minor issues like this with the upgrade on mainnet too but the point is, the Merge worked.

The need for the testnet is to enable developers to make the necessary assessment and try out new things before launching it on the main network. According to Josef Je, a developer who worked with the Ethereum Foundation, ” Goerli has this badge of a bottom-up testnet.”

Tim Beiko, the coordinator for Ethereum protocol developers disclosed that it does not take long to know that a test was successful. They just have to analyze some indicators. One of such indicators is the participation rate.

We want to see the network finalizing and having a high participation rate amongst validators and also make sure we don’t hit any unexpected bugs or issues.

Beiko also stated that developers will have to find out why the participation rate goes down. He further stated that the transaction will be another major indicator. In this case, the test would be said to have gone well if the blocks have actual transactions in them, and are not empty. Finally, they will have to check whether the network is finalized. This means that over two-thirds of validators should be online to agree on the same view of the chain history.