Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin confirmed that the merge date may be earlier than expected. But the exact date will depend on the network’s hash rate.
Vitalik Buterin says merge date may change
Buterin announced today that the terminal total difficulty (TDD) has been set to 5875000000000000000000000 (23 zeros). Vitalik also said that the exact date of the merge depends on the hash rate. Therefore, the merge could happen before the proposed September 15 date, just after the remaining hashes are mined. Vitalik made the related statements on Twitter today:
The total difficulty of the terminal is set at 5875000000000000000000000. This means that the Ethereum PoW network now has a (roughly) fixed number of hashes for me. bordel.wtf estimates the merge will happen around September 15, although the exact date will depend on the hash rate.
The terminal total difficulty has been set to 58750000000000000000000.
This means the ethereum PoW network now has a (roughly) fixed number of hashes left to mine.https://t.co/3um744WkxZ predicts the merge will happen around Sep 15, though the exact date depends on hashrate. pic.twitter.com/9YnloTWSi1
— vitalik.eth (@VitalikButerin) August 12, 2022
Ethereum protocol developer Terence Tsao has announced that Ethereum’s mainnet consolidation could happen sooner than previously expected. He said that Ethereum’s transition from PoW to PoS will most likely happen on September 15 or 16, 2022.
What you need to know before Ethereum merge
Core developers confirmed that the transition to PoS will be volatile after announcing the tentative merge date of September 15. Various testnet joins complete successfully, although the exact date and TTD can still be changed. The new official schedule will be at least three days ahead of Ethereum core developer Tim Beiko’s final forecast on September 19. cryptocoin.comWe have quoted the dates in this article.
Tentative Mainnet TTD 👇
58750000000000000000000
Note: nothing is final until it's in client release, so do expect changes last minute due to unforeseen circumstances https://t.co/PQ0YOKpk1u
— terence.eth (@terencechain) August 11, 2022
Ethereum 2.0 upgrade
Merge is an important phase of the Ethereum 2.0 release. While ETH 2.0 is widely celebrated by investors, miners will leave the network with the upgrade. The switch from PoW algorithm to PoS will bring validators instead of miners to the network.
Meanwhile, Vitalik Buterin does not expect Ethereum to be damaged by another fork. Buterin said during a webinar last week that Ethereum’s growth would not be affected much if a hard fork occurred:
I don’t really expect Ethereum to be seriously damaged by another fork.
Buterin is confident that the network will continue to rise after the positive feedback he has received from members of the project ecosystem. During the seminar on Saturday, he noted:
Overall, the impression I got from almost everyone I spoke to in the Ethereum ecosystem is that they fully support PoS and the ecosystem is pretty united about it.
But miners think otherwise
On the contrary, not everyone agrees with Buterin. Miners are not ready to lose their income source following Ethereum’s transition from PoW to PoS. In response, Buterin recommended that miners prefer the ETC network. Ethereum Classic is the legacy Ethereum Blockchain. A hotly debated hard fork in 2016 saw Ethereum split from the old chain. With the upcoming ETH 2.0, most miners are switching to Blockcains like ETC, BTC or LTC.
