A lot has been happening in the crypto market lately. Fron the bear plaguing the crypto-verse to abrupt lawsuits, the community even witnessed the demise of several projects. Amidst all of this chaos, Ethereum was seen prepping for its big upgrade, ‘The Merge.’ This network-wide upgrade would aid in the transition of the ecosystem from Proof-of-Work [PoW] to Proof-of-Stake [PoS]. Right before this shift that is expected to take place in August, the Ethereum network would undergo another upgrade.
Earlier today, Tim Beiko, a member of the Ethereum Foundation, took to Twitter and shared details about the Gray Glacier upgrade that is scheduled to take place this month. This update particularly meddles with the difficulty bomb. The difficulty bomb was integrated into the network back in 2015 and has been there ever since.
The difficulty bomb increases the computing difficulty of mining further making the whole process difficult and impossible to carry out. Once the bomb detonates, Ethereum’s transition to PoS would be initiated. Therefore, Gray Glacier comes in to push back the difficult bomb, supposedly and “hopefully” for the last time.
The Ethereum upgrade is scheduled to take place on the 29th of June.
Additionally, the difficulty bomb has been pushed back several times in the past through different upgrades. This includes Byzantium, Constantinople, Muir Glacier, London as well as Arrow Glacier. Gray Glacier would reportedly push the difficulty bomb back by 700,000 blocks giving the Ethereum network close to 100 days.
The Merge has been delayed multiple times before. Ethereum miners would go under a loss following the integration of PoS and an array of them have been looking forward to another delay. But Beiko affirmed that this time the chances of a delay were low.
Ethereum [ETH] is on the brink of dropping below $1K
As the network prepares for these big upgrades, the price of Ethereum’s native asset ETH was showing minimal support. The largest altcoin succumbed to the bears and was trading for a low of $1,081, during press time.
Galaxy Digital’s CEO Mike Novogratz even appeared in a recent interview and suggested that both Bitcoin, as well as Ethereum, would take a while to recover or gain bullish momentum.