Ethereum’s Merge Delayed Despite Monday’s Successful Mainnet Shadow Fork
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On Tuesday, the coordinator of Ethereum’s protocol developers, Tim Beiko, announced that the next stage of ETH 2.0 is now pushed back a few months into Q3. Referred to as the Merge, the Ethereum network is set to shift from the current energy-intensive proof of work (PoW) protocol onto the proof of stake (PoS) Beacon Chain that launched in December 2020. This next stage in the roadmap presents a number of challenges and risks as it will be the most significant step in the evolution of the Ethereum ecosystem.
The news of this delay is met with mixed sentiments from the crypto community. There are some that remain skeptical of the ambitious update which was formerly scheduled to go live in June. A majority of the previous tests, that on the Kiln testnet in March and the mainnet shadow fork test this past Monday, produced favorable results, however, DevOps engineer, Parathi Jayanathi, revealed that three of the shadow forks on the Goerli testnet exposed bugs with sync code and request timeouts. As a result, developers feel more time is needed before the update is ready.
Having caution before advancing with the Merge is the pragmatic approach to ensuring a successful outcome. This stage in the Ethereum roadmap is significant not only for the entire ecosystem but for the blockchain and crypto community as well. The successful launch of the update offers a path away from PoW mining, something the crypto industry has received much public criticism for this past year. What’s more, this is the first blockchain transition of this size to ever occur, and every business, investor, and application that runs on the network is at the mercy of developers having ironed out any potential issues.
When the Merge occurs, centralized exchanges and decentralized finance will most likely pause withdrawals and deposits of ETH coins in order to avoid potential errors in confirming transactions. The fear of bugs, like the one that caused a split in the network from a software update in 2020, is what gives some apprehension over possible fallout from a much larger scale change. Inevitably, high risk reaps high rewards and if developers wish to push back the timeline for the sake of efficiency and a smooth transition, it’s difficult to argue otherwise.