Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin and several other developers confirmed that the transition to the new Proof-of-Stake consensus mechanism could take place as early as August this year.
The Ethereum Dev Council at the Permissionless conference said that the long-awaited transition to the Proof-of-Stake (PoS) consensus mechanism could take place as early as August this year, “if everything goes according to plan.” Developer Preston Van Loon said the team hopes to make the transition before the so-called “complexity bomb” degrades the network.
A “difficulty bomb” is a procedure that gradually makes mining ETH coins more difficult. It is divided into several stages, each of which increases the time for block validation. To date, the speed of creating a new block is approximately 13 seconds. The system is made specifically to gradually force miners to leave the first generation network and switch to a new one.
According to fellow developer Justin Drake, ensuring a fast merge has always been a priority for the team. According to him, the developers want to have time to do this before the “difficulty bomb” moves to a new stage and complicates mining. It is noteworthy that the so-called “merger” was planned back in April, but one of the developers of Ethereum announced that it was again being postponed.
The information about the merger was also confirmed by the founder of the Ethereum network, Vitalik Buterin. At today’s ETH Shanghai Web 3.0 summit, he stated that the estimated transition time is the end of summer. However, he mentioned some risks that could shift the deadlines to September-October this year.
The main reason many Ethereum holders are waiting for the merger is that they expect a reduction in ETH issuance of around 90%. Less ETH in circulation means less supply and, consequently, high demand, which should significantly increase the value of the cryptocurrency. The most optimistic traders believe that switching to PoS will double the price to almost $5,000.
Recall that the migration of the main Ethereum test network Ropsten should take place on June 8th. After that, numerous network health tests will begin, and only then will the exact transition date become known.
