Ethereum (ETH)’s merge, a major step in the network’s long-awaited transition to Proof-Of-Stake (PoS) consensus, has once again been pushed back and is expected to finally see the light of day in the third quarter of 2022.
Merge postponed until after June
Ethereum (ETH) users will have to wait a few more months to finally witness the merge of the network. In a few words, this major step will connect Ethereum’s executive layer – the one on which decentralized applications (dApps) are deployed – with the consensus layer – namely the Beacon Chain, based on the Proof-Of-Stake (POS).
This update has been postponed several times and was supposed to take place in June 2022. Finally, one of the developers of the Ethereum Foundation, Tim Beiko, announced on Twitter that the merge will be pushed back again:
“It won’t be in June, but probably in the next few months. No set date yet, but we are definitely in the final chapter of the PoW on Ethereum.”
However, the announcement of this postponement does not seem to be unanimous. On a Reddit forum dedicated to Ethereum miners, a mining pool operator said he had “reviewed code and run nodes on the merge test networks.” According to him, the merge may not happen until 2023:
“We plan to actively dedicate our developers to testing the merge once it becomes public and do our best to identify bugs to further delay the merge. This will make it safer.”
It would seem that Ethereum’s transition to a Proof-Of-Stake consensus is not just a technical issue, but a governance issue.
The Proof-Of-Stake and the miners of Ethereum
Commonly dubbed Ethereum 2.0, though officially titled Consensus Layer, Ethereum’s move from a Proof-Of-Work (PoW) consensus model to a Proof-Of-Stake model is one of the most important milestones in the network’s history.
This update is being touted as the fundamental change that will put an end to debates about the energy consumption of the network and the decentralized applications implemented on it. Moreover, it also marks the end of Ethereum’s mining as we know it today, a subject that obviously worries miners.
In fact, Tim Beiko’s comment on Twitter comes in response to a user who asked him about the future of Ethereum miners, having supported the project for several years. As the transition to PoS no longer involves mining activity, will these miners “be left behind?”
The head of the merge developers simply replied that he strongly advises “against investing in mining equipment now.”
