Ethereum Foundation developer Tim Beiko has hinted at a potential further delay to the Ethereum’s final switch to the much anticipated proof-of-stake mechanism.
The ‘Ethereum Merge’, it appears, will now take place “a few months” after June, yet another delay that pushes the Ethereum 2.0 upgrade beyond Q2 2022.
Beiko, who believes Ethereum miners should not be investing in new mining equipment at the moment, hinted at the delay early Wednesday morning.
“It won’t be June, but likely in the few months after. No firm date yet, but we’re definitely in the final chapter of PoW on Ethereum” he noted.
What’s the Ethereum Merge?
On 1 December 2020, Ethereum’s Beacon chain went live, introducing the proof-of-stake consensus mechanism to the Ethereum network. It marked a new milestone in the ETH ecosystem’s push to transition from energy-intensive PoW mining.
But the Beacon chain runs parallel to the Ethereum Mainnet, which continues to use mining to secure the network.
The Merge is set to see the Mainnet and the Beacon chain become one, with mining being dropped wholly for staking as a way of securing the network. The “merge” is also eyed as the predecessor of shard chains, a key milestone in the quest for scalability, security and sustainability.
This is critical to Ethereum as it looks to secure even more value for society. The blockchain network currently anchors the most decentralised finance (DeFi) projects and non-fungible tokens (NFTs) among other applications.
The merge was projected for the second quarter, according to an upgrades page on the same.