Just In: It’s Official, Ethereum Confirms Mainnet Schedule For PoS Merge

The Ethereum Foundation has on Wednesday confirmed the schedule for the upcoming transition to proof of stake consensus. The Foundation said the Bellatrix upgrade is scheduled for on September 6, as announced earlier. Whereas the terminal total difficulty value triggering the Merge at 58750000000000000000000 is expected between Sept 10-20.

Explaining the reason for announcing a broad timeline range, the Foundation cited network hash rate volatility. “If more hash rate joins the network, TTD will be reached sooner. Similarly, if hash rate leaves the network, TTD will be reached later.”

Ethereum Mainnet Schedule

The developers said successful upgrade of all public testnets is now complete. Also, the Merge has been scheduled for the Ethereum mainnet. Initially, the Bellatrix network upgrade on the consensus layer is triggered by an epoch height. Following this, the execution layer’s transition from proof-of-work is triggered by a specific total difficulty threshold called the terminal total difficulty.

“Ethereum is moving to proof-of-stake! The transition, known as The Merge, must first be activated on the Beacon Chain with the Bellatrix upgrade. After this, the proof-of-work chain will migrate to proof-of-stake upon hitting a specific Total Difficulty value.”

In order to remain on Ethereum during and after Merge, node operators must run both execution and consensus layer client. The consensus layer changes under the Bellatrix directory of the consensus-specs repository. Whereas the execution layer changes under the Paris spec in the execution-specs repository, the Foundation explained in a blog. Also, the Foundation said validators on the Beacon Chain will need to run an execution layer client after The Merge, This is in addition to their consensus layer clients.

ETH Traders Closely Watching The Merge

In the lead up to the Ethereum Mainnet Schedule, a section of traders are anticipating an ETH price drop. As of writing, ETH price stands at $1,657.15, up 0.29% in the last 24 hours, according to CoinMarketCap figures. When compared on a 7-day basis, the cryptocurrency dropped by around 11.16%. Meanwhile, Bitcoin (BTC) witnessed a sharp decline at the far end of last week. As of writing, BTC stands at $21,408.36, down 0.43% in the last 24 hours.

It is expected that the Merge could turn out to be a key event for the crypto market, which saw repeated setbacks this year. Any significant momentum to the ETH price could also mean a bullish scenario for the rest of the assets as well.