The penultimate test environment network (testnet) merge before Ethereum makes its long-awaited move from proof-of-work to proof-of-stake has successfully been completed.
-
Sepolia was the second of three public testnets to run through the Merge. After this, Goerli is expected to merge.
-
The network transitioned to proof-of-stake (PoS) when the Terminal Total Difficulty (TTD) exceeded 17,000,000,000,000,000. This occurred around 17:00 UTC.
-
In the hours since the testnet merge happened, no significant glitches have been reported.
-
The Sepolia merge was a two-step process. Ethereum announced that first the operators needed to update their consensus layer and execution layer clients together. Then this activated two phases: the first at an epoch height on the Beacon Chain and the second upon hitting the total difficulty value on the execution layer.
-
The testnet merge takes the project one step closer to Ethereum’s mainnet upgrade later this year. The first testnet merge, Ropsten, was completed on June 8.
Read more: Merge Testing on Ethereum: What Is It and Why Does It Matter?
