The Ethereum beacon chain is set to merge with the Ropsten testnet, one of Ethereum’s earliest testnets. The Ethereum Foundation announced the upcoming merge with Ropsten in a blog post published on May 30, celebrating the move into the final testing stage for the switch to proof-of-stake. The Ropsten beacon chain was launched today, with the merge itself to take place around June 8.
Ethereum developer Tim Beiko said that there were two prerequisites for the merge to happen on Ropsten. The first is its beacon chain’s activating the Bellatrix upgrade, due for June 2, and the second the terminal total difficulty to use for the Ropsten merge. The latter should be announced on June 3.
The Ethereum Foundation notes that this particular Merge is different from the previous ones. This time, node operators will have to upgrade their consensus and execution layers in tandem. The upgrade will also take place over two phases, the first at a slot height on the Beacon Chain and the second upon hitting a Total Difficulty value on the execution layer.
There will be more testnet deployments before proof-of-stake finally comes to Ethereum. Both the Goerli and Sepolia testnets will also experience proof-of-stake transitions before it occurs on the mainnet.
There will be a Merge community call on June 3, which will help address any lingering questions. There are steps to be taken for stakers, which the foundation addresses in the blog post.
Ethereum has been chipping away at the development needed to scale the network. The ecosystem has grown regardless, but many investors will be happy to see that proof-of-stake is very much around the corner.
There are other reasons to be optimistic as well. The Prysmatic Labs team and Vitalik Buterin have both said that the final Merge with the mainnet could happen as early as August 2022. This would be phenomenal news for Ethereum, which has long waited for that switch.
earlier this year did much to infuse Ethereum investors with confidence. It was the start of a chain of development events this year that puts the asset on a rising path. Sectors like DeFi and NFTs will also benefit tremendously, which could do a lot of good as wider adoption takes place.