ETHEREUM

Merger Timeline Highlights | Ethereum Developer: No merger in June, suggests refraining from investing in mining equipment

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Merger Timeline Highlights | Ethereum Developer: No merger in June, suggests refraining from investing in mining equipment

Ethereum Foundation core developer Tim Beiko announced on Twitter yesterday, the 13th, that the highly anticipated Ethereum merge "The Merge" will be delayed and will not be happening by the end of the originally estimated second quarter. Additionally, he also mentioned that the current timing is not ideal for investing in mining equipment.

Ethereum Merge Delayed

Following the successful testnet merge, it was widely believed that the Ethereum merge would take place in June. However, according to Tim Beiko's response to a query on Twitter, this expectation might be too optimistic.

"The merge won't happen in June, but it might happen in the following months. There isn't a date set in stone yet, but we are definitely in the last chapter of Ethereum PoW," Tim Beiko stated.

Due to the changes in the consensus mechanism post-merge, the equipment currently used for PoW mining will gradually become obsolete. Tim Beiko strongly advised against investing in mining equipment at this time in his response as well.

Tim Beiko's Follow-Up Summary

Due to the extensive community discussion sparked by Tim Beiko's response, he shared key points about the merge timeline today:

When will the merge take place?

  • There is no formal date set. It will only be confirmed once the client teams ensure that the software implementation has been thoroughly tested and is error-free. Any announcements regarding dates will be made on blog.ethereum.org.

What preparations need to be made before the merge?

  • As of April 2022, all client teams are engaged in the development of the merge, have gone through test suites, launched new testnets, and conducted shadow fork tests.
  • Issues with client implementations have been revealed during shadow forks running on existing testnets and the Ethereum mainnet. The teams are currently addressing these issues and regularly rerunning the shadow forks to test the fixes.
  • Once the clients are working correctly during the shadow fork period, the existing Ethereum testnets (Ropsten, Goerli, etc.) will undergo the merge. An announcement will be made on blog.ethereum.org at that time.
  • Once the clients are functioning properly during the shadow fork period, the existing Ethereum testnets (Ropsten, Goerli, etc.) will transition to running through The Merge. An announcement will be made on blog.ethereum.org at that time.
  • After successful testnet upgrades and stability, the time for the upgrade on the Ethereum mainnet will be set.

How will the difficulty bomb affect the timeline?

  • The difficulty bomb is expected to begin appearing on the Ethereum network around May and significantly increase block times in June and July, making block speeds unbearably slow (reading times around 15-20 seconds) before August.
  • If client developers feel they cannot complete the merge before block times become too slow, the merge will need to be delayed once again.

How can we help expedite the merge?

If you run nodes as an infrastructure provider, validator, or enthusiast, test your current setups on Kiln to ensure they operate as expected. Testing software in various environments and observing from multiple perspectives is the best way to catch errors early in the process.