The Ethereum blockchain is all set to make its highly anticipated transition from its current proof-of-work (PoW) mining consensus to proof-of-stake (PoS). The Merge date is officially scheduled for Sept. 15–16 after the successful final Goerli testnet integration to the Beacon Chain on Aug. 11.
At present, miners can create new Ether (ETH) by pledging a huge amount of computing power. After the Merge, however, network participants, known as validators, will be required to instead pledge large amounts of pre-existing ETH to validate blocks, creating more ETH and earning staking rewards.
The three-phase transition process began on Dec. 1, 2020, with the launch of the Beacon Chain. Phase 0 of the process marked the beginning of the PoS transition, where validators started staking their ETH for the first time. However, Phase 0 didn’t impact the Ethereum mainnet.
The terminal total difficulty has been set to 58750000000000000000000.
This means the ethereum PoW network now has a (roughly) fixed number of hashes left to mine.https://t.co/3um744WkxZ predicts the merge will happen around Sep 15, though the exact date depends on hashrate. pic.twitter.com/9YnloTWSi1
— vitalik.eth (@VitalikButerin) August 12, 2022
Phase 1, the integration of the Beacon Chain with the current Ethereum mainnet was scheduled for mid-2021; however, due to several delays and unfinished work on the developer’s end, it got postponed to early 2022. Phase 1 is all set for completion in the third quarter of 2022 with the Merge. This phase would eliminate PoW-based miners from the ecosystem and make many current PoW-based projects redundant.
Phase 2 and the final phase of the transition would see the integration of Ethereum WebAssembly or eWASM and introduce other key scalability features, such as sharding, which developers and co-founder Vitalik Buterin believe would help Ethereum achieve processing speeds on par with centralized payment processors.
In anticipation of the Merge, there has been active chatter about what would happen to the PoW chain after the mainnet transitions to PoS. Many centralized exchanges have thrown their support behind the Merge but have stated that if PoW-based chains gain traction from miners, then exchanges will list the forked chain and support them.
Weighing in the possibility of a successful hard fork
Chandler Guo, an influential Bitcoin (BTC) miner, was among the first to bring out a case for the PoW Ethereum chain post-Merge. In a tweet on July 28, Guo shared…
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