Goerli testnet merge completed successfully, Ethereum merger is on track

With the successful Goerli testnet merge, confidence is growing that there will not be any further delays to the Ethereum merge scheduled for mid-September.

Goerli is the last testnet scheduled to be merged after Ropsten and Sepolia, and officially became a Proof-of-Stake (PoS) blockchain at 1:45 AM (UTC) on August 11.

The Goerli testnet merge has been completed without any major issues, suggesting that the Ethereum merge tentatively scheduled for September 19 will not be delayed.

Many key developers and figures in the Ethereum ecosystem took to Twitter to share their enthusiasm for a successful merger, with EthHub co-founder Anthony Sassano telling his 216,400 followers, “Next up is (finally) Ethereum Mainnet!! The merge is coming.”

However, some have pointed out that there were also some minor issues with the first two testnet merges.

Ethereum developer Marius van der Wijden noted that there was “some confusion on the network due to two different terminal blocks and many non-updated nodes” slowing down the process a bit, but that the situation was looking “pretty good” anyway.

Ethereum lead developer Tim Beiko also shared a screenshot after Goerli switched to PoS.

There is now growing confidence that the much-anticipated merger of the Ethereum mainnet with the PoS-based beacon chain will go smoothly, as Beiko has previously stated that if the testnet merger goes smoothly, the major upgrade will be completed on (or close to) his proposed date of September 19.

Seen as one of the most significant upgrades in blockchain’s history, the merger will significantly reduce Ethereum’s energy consumption while bringing the network closer to its long-term scalability, security, and sustainability goals.

Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin is very optimistic about the Ethereum merger, which he believes will drastically change the fundamentals of the network, reducing energy consumption in the process.

Speaking at the Blockchain Futurist Conference in Toronto, Buterin said, “Ethereum’s energy consumption will be reduced by more than 99.9% [after the merger], so that’s a big improvement. It’s also an opportunity to take some of the ideas that we’ve learned over the last eight years or so and use them to really redefine what different parts of the Ethereum chain [can do].”

Buterin said that after the switch, the network can become more secure, with faster transactions and lower costs. This also opens the door to more upgrades to Ethereum in the future. Buterin added that after the merger, the biggest focus will be on the scalability of the network.

Once the merger is complete, the next major milestone will be the multi-phase sharding upgrade, which will significantly enhance the “distribution of data storage needs, make Rollups cheaper, and make nodes easier to operate,” according to the Ethereum website. Sharding essentially involves distributing the Ethereum database horizontally across shard chains, providing the network with greater capacity while taking pressure off the core network.

As traders become more bullish on the consolidation, Ethereum prices hit their highest level since June. Ethereum prices have been surging, with its price increasing by 72.2% over the past 30 days to $1,890 at the time of writing.