Ethereum (ETH)’s much awaited merge from PoW to PoS has begun. The planned trial upgrade on Ropsten testnet concluded as expected today.
Ethereum merge is live on Ropsten testnet today
To Ethereum team first introduced the Ropsten testnet in 2016. Ropsten is basically the oldest testnet of Ethereum that allows pre-mainnet development testing. Similar to other testnets, it is the same as the mainnet. No “real” funds are at risk only if any technical problems occur.
The developers first announced the release date of the upgrade on May 18. On this date, Ethereum core developer Terence Tsao announced that Ropsten’s Beacon Chain configuration, a PoS network that works with Ethereum, has been merged and client versions are expected soon.
After that, things progressed rapidly with the Bellatrix upgrade, one of the two requirements for the Ropsten testnet Merge, which announced the launch of a new beacon chain on May 30 with another Ethereum developer, Tim Beiko, and went live on June 2. .
The developers have also decided that a preset difficulty value where Ropsten Merge happens is 50 quadrillion. So he had to decide on the so-called “Terminal Total Difficulty” (TTD). As explained by Beiko, such a high value was chosen “due to the low PoW hash rate on testnets and the risk of Mergers happening before the network is ready with the Bellatrix update.”
Most important before ETH 2.0 one of the steps
The Ethereum Foundation shared who is on the team in a blog post. The client software teams participating in Ropsten Merge include the following names.
- Lighthouse
- Lodestar
- Prysm
- Nimbus
- Teku
- Besu
- Erigon
- Nethermind
Ropsten Merge today is a crucial step before Ethereum’s actual transition to the Consensus Layer (formerly ETH 2.0) scheduled for August this year.
In essence, it gives developers a first taste of what things will look like in the future when Ethereum finally moves to the PoS mechanism. Ethereum Core developer Preston van Loon wrote last month:
The merger of Ropsten is a major test milestone for Ethereum’s mainnet merger this year.
The Ethereum team has been working for years for this process merger. The Teni Pos model is expected to reduce energy and wage costs. Apart from these, with merge, the Ethereum network will become more scalable. Therefore, it can be said to be the biggest upgrade in Ethereum’s history. If successful, it could become an Ethereum 2022 catalyst, according to analysts.
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