Developers working on the blockchain have had their sleeves up for a long time. They have been working to actualize the blockchain’s transition from a proof-of-work protocol to a proof-of-stake protocol. The process has been ongoing and it is expected to be finalized with the long-awaited Merge upgrade.
First Upgrades
Many testnet upgrades were done in 2020 in preparation for the eventual Merge upgrade. The first thing that was done was the Beacon Chain launch which brought back the hopes around a blockchain that would have the capacity for transactions almost instantly.
Much later, the Goerli upgrade was carried out successfully. It was after this testnet upgrade that Ethereum developers finally put a date to the Merge upgrade. The speculations put the date for the final Merge at the 15th of September as influenced by the network’s hash rate and mining difficulty that was worked with.
Following the comments from many Ethereum developers that the final Merge will take place on the 15th of September, the network’s co-founder, Vitalik Buterin, has given a second opinion. Buterin recently stated that the final Merge date is dependent on the Ethereum hash rate. Buterin’s case is that the total difficulty to reach in order for the Merge to be done has been pegged at 58,75,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,000.
Early Results
The 15th of September date was first reached with regard to the selected difficulty level and the network’s average hash rate of 872.2 TH/s at that time. But right now, the network’s total difficulty level is at 57,70,49,02,01,07,48,20,74,40,547 and the overall readiness for the Merge is confirmed at 98.21% completion.
It is said that if the hash rate is maintained at its current momentum and the Bellatrix upgrade set for the 6th of September holds as planned without problems, then the Ethereum Merge might be instigated before the 15th of September that was set for it.
The Ethereum merge had been postponed on a number of occasions due to several bugs and technical issues developers were trying to fix. This caused a number of people to cast doubt on the 15th of September date when it was first announced.
Note also that the price of Ethereum reacted positively to the news of the Merge last most. ETH price peaked especially after the Goerli upgrade was completed.
