Ethereum: The Merge likely to make its debut in August

Sahana Kiran
Ethereum
Source – Unsplash

Ethereum has been the biggest altcoin in the crypto-verse for quite some time now. From allowing an array of applications to build on it to emerge as the face of DeFi, the network has played a vital role in the crypto industry. The network, however, intended to switch up its entire algorithm by migrating to Proof-of-Stake [PoS] from Proof-of-Work [PoW]. More recently, the devs working on this transition revealed that it could occur as early as August.

Speaking at the Permissionless panel, Ethereum core developer Preston Van Loon shed light on how ‘The Merge’ would make its debut if everything went as planned. Elaborating on the same he said,

“As far as we know, if everything goes to plan, August—it just makes sense. If we don’t have to move [the difficulty bomb], let’s do it as soon as we can.”

Ethereum researcher Justin Drake echoed this thought and suggested that they intended to roll out The Merge in August. He added, “Strong desire to make this happen before difficulty bomb in August.”

The difficulty bomb was introduced years ago in order to stay at par with the imminent transition into PoS. The difficulty bomb will reportedly make it hard for PoW miners to solve the puzzle during the mining process. Furthermore, this would eventually make mining difficult and decrease the chances of PoW mining.

Proof-of-Stake to revamp Ethereum

The much-awaited shift to PoS comes with an array of benefits. Reduced energy consumption is a prominent one. With regulators calling out PoW cryptocurrencies, Ethereum’s transition from PoW to PoS is considered to be timely. Along with this, the level of decentralization is reportedly elevated as it requires several validators who would be running the network.

In addition to that, Ethereum will also witness a significant decrease of the circulating supply, which may make the asset more deflationary over time, and in turn increase the value of it’s tokens.

At press time, ETH was trading for $2,042 with a nearly 6 percent surge over the last 24-hours. The Merge is further speculated to push the asset’s price all the way to $4k or possibly $5k. Ethereum 2.0 will bring more development into the ecosystem. From sharding to eliminating congestion, Eth2 is considered to be revolutionary for the network.