Tim Beiko, an Ethereum Protocol developer, announced earlier this week, as previously promised, that the Merge will not take place in June. Ethereum’s shift to a Proof-of-Stake protocol has been hampered by delays. Users are concerned that each setback will give competing layer 1s an opportunity to catch up.
However, Evan Van Ness, a member of ConsenSys and the founder of the website Week in Ethereum News, stated that the Merge had not been postponed and would take place soon, albeit slightly behind schedule. He went on to say that the setback was due to the difficulty of “turning off PoW.”
Ethereum’s current Proof-of-Work (PoW) chain is used in conjunction with a Proof-of-Stake chain. The Merge is a “merging” of chains that will completely degrade the PoW chain.
In December 2021, Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin announced a new path to Ethereum 2.0, or the ConsenSys layer, as it should be called. The merging, the surge, the verge, the purge, and the splurge are the five stages in chronological/completion order from left to right.
The ConsenSys layer has a long way to go before completion, with the merge being the first of five steps. Prior to the new approach, the old first stage—known as Phase 0—was tasked with delivering the Beacon Chain, which was plagued by delays and was finally delivered in December 2020. This upgrade introduced native staking and laid the groundwork for the complete move to PoS.
Delays to the ConsenSys layer are so prevalent and expected in crypto circles that they’ve become a running joke. Van Ness believes that the merge was never delayed because there was never a set date. Instead, he said that the timing is determined by how well the Merge and “the bomb” work together.
“The bomb” is a term used to describe a process that makes mining more difficult and unprofitable over time. ETH will eventually become unmineable as a result of this. According to Van Ness, the bomb is impossible to foresee because it is predicated on variable hashrate and price. Although the merge will not take place in June, Van Ness predicts a two-week delay.
According to reports, the merger will not arrive until late this year or early 2023. The source of this report was a pool operator who “examined the code” and based his estimate on it.
Read more: Ethereum’s developer reveals merging plans
