Ethereum 2.0 “Merge Phase” Delayed to Q3

Ethereum’s merger from PoW (proof of work) to PoS (proof of stake) has been postponed to the second half of this year, and could be as early as the third quarter.

On April 13, Ethereum Foundation developer Tim Beiko responded to a follower's inquiry and said that the merged part of the 2.0 upgrade will not be completed in June as expected by the outside world, "but it may be in the next few months. There is no exact date yet, but we are definitely in the last chapter of Ethereum PoW."

The "final chapter" means that Ethereum's way of relying on mining to ensure the security of the network is about to end, and the network will move into the prelude to entering the PoS mechanism. The "overture" has already sounded.

On April 11, Ethereum completed the first "shadow fork" of the network and launched a merged test network for the transition from PoW to PoS. According to another foundation developer, the merged test network of the "shadow fork" is to allow the developer community to practice running their nodes, deploying contracts, testing infrastructure, etc., to help them understand the merged Ethereum world.

There are still many large and small tests before Ethereum 2.0 is officially launched. This network, which carries a variety of blockchain application templates, will realize the merger of the "consensus layer" in the second half of 2022. At that time, the mining era of Ethereum will officially end.

The total amount of beacon chain staked exceeds 11.393 million ETH

Ethereum Merge is the common name for Ethereum's transition from PoW to PoS, and is also an important part of the Ethereum 2.0 upgrade. Previously, it was widely predicted that the merger would be completed before June this year, until Ethereum Foundation developer Tim Beiko came forward to clarify.

On April 13, Tim Bacow tweeted that the merger would not take place in June, but would probably take place a few months later, with the exact date still unknown. According to him, the earliest time for the merger to take place would be in the third quarter of this year.

In order to dispel some misunderstandings, the Ethereum Foundation announced in January this year that it would phase out the term "Ethereum 2.0" and replace it with the term "consensus layer" to explain that 2.0 is not a brand new network, but a major upgrade.

The transition from PoW to PoS is essentially a change in the consensus mechanism. The concept of "consensus layer" is also accompanied by the concept of "execution layer". The two concepts can help people better understand the concept of "merger". Currently, all smart contracts and network rules run on Ethereum's "execution layer", and the responsibility of the "consensus layer" is to ensure that all devices that contribute to the network act in accordance with the rules and punish illegal devices. When the "consensus layer" is ready to replace the current mining system, the two layers will be merged and help Ethereum achieve the 2.0 upgrade.

At present, the merger has been postponed to the second half of this year, but an irreversible fact is that Ethereum will completely end the way of relying on mining machines (PoW mechanism) to maintain network operation in 2022. Miners will be replaced by nodes that obtain network verification rights by staking ETH (PoS mechanism).

The Ethereum beacon chain (a network that scans and verifies network transaction data) launched in November 2020 officially opened staking to willing nodes, which is called ETH 2.0 staking. The price of ETH has never stopped fluctuating in the past year or so, but the ETH staked on the beacon chain has always maintained an upward trend.

The total number of ETH2.0 stakes has been rising

According to OKLink data, as of April 12, the total stake of ETH 2.0 reached 11,393,074 ETH, the total number of staked addresses was 360,938, and the total number of validators (the number of clients that act as actual validators on the beacon chain) was 355,142.

From the data, more and more validators support Ethereum 2.0, and the network will inevitably enter a more scalable PoS mechanism, and the PoW mining method will be eliminated. Previously, Tim Beko also reminded users not to invest in any Ethereum mining equipment.

"Shadow Fork" prepares for the transition of consensus mechanism

As Tim Beko put it, the current stage of Ethereum is the "final chapter" of the PoW era, and in fact it is also the "prelude" of this blockchain network entering the PoS era.

In order to allow developers to enter the PoS version of Ethereum safely and adaptably, the network completed a "shadow fork" on April 11. According to the official explanation of the Ethereum Foundation, a shadow fork means that a small number of nodes are configured to fork out of the Ethereum network at a certain point, and the valid transaction information on the main chain can be mapped to the forked chain, thereby simulating the throughput of the original network.

This forked chain can also be understood as a merged test network of Ethereum, which allows developers to stress test assumptions such as block construction time. Ethereum Foundation developer Parithosh Jayanthi explained that the purpose of the merged test network is to allow the community to practice running their nodes, deploying contracts, testing infrastructure, etc. "We hope that it will help the community understand the world after the merger."

The shadow fork remains connected to the nodes on the Ethereum standard chain, which means that some transactions will appear on both chains. According to the test network browser data, as of April 14, in less than 3 days, the shadow fork network has processed more than 9.869 million transactions, has more than 3.125 million wallet addresses, and has a total of more than 14.579 million blocks, with an average block time of 13.5 seconds.

Basic data of the shadow fork chain

Parithosh Jayanthi said after the fork was completed that some node clients noticed some problems after the fork, and according to reports, the severity of the problems was minor.

The success of the "shadow fork" was called a "historical event" by the developers of the Ethereum Foundation. Whether the forked chain can operate safely and stably and undertake stress testing well is directly related to future upgrades. Tim Beko said that the success of the shadow fork is the key to determining the actual merger date of Ethereum.

Prior to the “shadow fork”, multiple other testing activities for the Ethereum 2.0 upgrade had been successfully completed. For example, the Klin testnet merge went smoothly in mid-March, merging the Ethereum execution layer under the PoW mechanism with the beacon chain. The Klin testnet was also the final testnet for Ethereum 2.0 before the actual merge.

As of April 14, Ethereum's market value was $375.8 billion. This blockchain network, which carries the value of ETH, the world's second largest cryptocurrency, has become much richer than when it was first created. It has become the mainstream underlying network for DApps (decentralized applications). The application scenarios it supports include decentralized finance (DeFi), the metaverse, NFTs and GameFi, as well as more than 500,000 ERC-20 standard crypto tokens.

The huge volume of applications places higher and higher demands on the performance and scalability of the underlying network, which is also an important reason for Ethereum's transition to the PoS mechanism. No matter how much miners are nostalgic for the current Ethereum, this network will eventually end the PoW curtain in an irreversible way, and the end time will not be later than 2022.