Latest news about Bitcoin and all cryptocurrencies. Your daily crypto news habit.
Against Ethereum core developers’ suggested September 19 new timeline for The Merge upgrade, top Chinese miner and the founder of crypto mining pool BTC.TOP, Jiang Zhuoer, has reiterated his view that the date will be postponed.
At their 91st bi-weekly meeting about consensus layer (CL) protocol and software client developments on Thursday July 14, the developers expect the switch from POW to POS to hold tentatively in the week of Sept 19 depending on the results of the Goerli testnet.
The Goerli is one of two testnets that developers will maintain alongside Sepolia post-Merge upgrade. Its fork is planned for the week of August 8 should all client teams are ready to cut releases for its activation by the last week of July. Developers expect the mainnet Merge activation throughout the month of September for The Merge’s two hard fork upgrades which will be scheduled roughly two weeks apart.
Goerli updates will be discussed during the Merge Community Call #6 on Friday, August 12. They also discussed a minor change to the Merge activation process to reduce the complexity of the upgrade and improve the user experience for node operators. The change entails one total terminal difficulty (TTD) – instead of two TTDs – baked into the CL client software being released during the Merge activation process.
Zhuoer, a well-known Chinese miner and supporter of ETH, said the upgrade will be postponed, and there is a high probability it will only happen between November and December. He attributes the expected postponement to the fact that it is common for a large software development project like The Merge to end up being delayed and because many Ethereum applications are yet to begin testing.
He also believes that The Merge’s increased lock-up, and deflation, among others, will coincide with the Ethereum market’s decline at the end of this year and start the next round of bull market.
It is highly likely that the #Ethereum merger will occur in November to December, fitting the convention of the end of the market plummets at the end of the year.#Bitcoin #Ethereum https://t.co/LtBCGFBQPK
— Jiang Zhuoer BTC.TOP (@JiangZhuoer) July 18, 2022
“As a result, let’s give it two or three more months, this is also the final date that the block times become unbearable extended by the difficulty bomb,” Zhuoer states in a short piece. “It is highly likely that the merger will occur in November to December, which fits the convention of the end of the market plummet at the end of the year (the previous bear markets in 2014 and 2018 all saw a falling stop by the end of the year). ETH as the leader would start the next round of bull market.”
He is particularly interested in three major developments in the post-Ethereum 2.0 stage: the 90% reduction in Ethereum supply; the staked ETH to likely increase from the current 10% to 30% of the total supply; and the real inflation rate of Ethereum dropping from 2.0% to 1.8% in line with the EIP-1559 burning scheme.
Since the EIP 1559’s activation, more than 2.35 million ETH has been burned in a process that is expected in a post-upgrade state. Other impacts to be expected is a minimized disruption to the network’s tooling and infrastructure as well as a ~1 second reduction of average block times.
The Merge’s switch is to move Ethereum away from being mining-dependent to staked capital – in the form of ETH – being used to validate transactions on its network. It will also see the ETH that has so far been locked in the Ethereum Beacon chain since late 2020 be unlocked.
An EthStaker Merge Prep Validator Workshop is slated for Friday July 29 as an opportunity for solo stakers to prepare for and ask questions about The Merge.
Disclaimer
The views and opinions expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not reflect the views of Bitcoin Insider. Every investment and trading move involves risk - this is especially true for cryptocurrencies given their volatility. We strongly advise our readers to conduct their own research when making a decision.