Ethereum’s most active test network, Goerli underwent a merge on the night between Wednesday and Thursday in a history-creating instance. This dress rehearsal has paved way for the ultimate milestone of the transition of Ethereum from a proof-of-work blocks mechanism to a proof-of-stake consensus mechanism. The transition is expected to take place in the coming September most probably. This proposed merge has been in the headlines for a long time now mainly because it will make Ethereum an energy-saving blockchain.
In the course of this dress rehearsal merge, Ethereum upgraded to the proof-of-stake mechanism once the Terminal Total Difficulty (TTD) crossed the 10,790,000 mark. The success of this testnet has now pushed us one step further towards the much-hyped and welcomed Ethereum mainnet upgrade that is expected to commence somewhere in September 2022.
The Context
There are three fundamental testnets for Ethereum merge including Ropsten, Sepolia, and Goerli. The first two testnets, Ropsten and Sepolia, had already been performed successfully and now the third and last one has also been tested without any problem back in June. Even though all three deployments were of significant importance but Goerli was considered the most important dry run for the Ethereum blockchain. The developers who have participated in this testing have said that the test has been completed and now they will have to wait another 24 hours if some complication arises.
With the successful deployment of Ropsten, Sepolia, and now Goerli testnet, blockchain developers are quite positive about the mainnet transition of Ethereum blockchain to a proof-of-stake (PoS) consensus mechanism. Although all the hurdles have been elevated now for the Mainnet upgrade, the exact date of the merge is still unknown. All we know so far is that the merge will take place somewhere in September and the exact date will be made public hopefully within a week now.
Goerli and the other testnets (Ropsten and Sepolia) are of supreme importance for the Ethereum merge. It is primarily because these testnets are analogous and have enabled the developers to search for bugs, errors, and security loopholes to fix them before time.
Why the Ethereum Merge is Important?
The main advantage of the upcoming Ethereum merge is that the power consumption for block verification will reduce by up to 99% approximately. It means that the energy required will be just like any ordinary household computer. Thanks to this advantage, this merge is being considered one of the most useful upgrades witnessed in the history of blockchain technology.
Furthermore, once Ethereum becomes a proof-of-stake blockchain, it will no longer be possible to verify transactions on Mainnet through mining. This task will then be performed by validators on the Beacon chain. The addition of the Ether (ETH) in the circulation will also drop significantly due to low staking rewards which may cause the price to jump sharply.
Sharding may also become possible which means that validators will be able to split work which will enable the network to handle more transactions. In that case, people will be able to run Ethereum on their phones as well.
