The delay of the difficulty bomb with the Gray Glacier hard fork was successful on the Ethereum network yesterday. The difficulty bomb makes Proof-of-Work mining on Ethereum so difficult that it is practically impossible to continue mining after that point.
The idea is to use the bomb to force everyone to switch to Proof-of-Stake. However, the update to Proof-of-Stake was not completed in time, so the bomb had to be postponed.
Postpone until October
The Gray Glacier hard fork became active with the mining of block number 15050000 on June 30. Thanks to the hard fork, the difficulty bomb is delayed by 700,000 blocks. That gives the developers of Ethereum an extra 100 days to get everything ready. Which means the highly anticipated Merge is scheduled for mid-October.
It’s not the first time the difficulty bomb has been delayed. The previous postponement action took place in December 2021, delaying the bomb until mid-2022. Months later, the same song is playing again, which makes people rightly wonder to what extent Ethereum is actually ready for The Merge.
Sepolia Merge ready for launch
Developer Tim Beiko announced via Twitter that the Sepolia testnet will also practice a Merge in the coming days. This makes Sepolia number two of the three testnets that will practice a Merge. “After years of work to bring Proof-of-Stake to Ethereum, we are now finally in the final testing phase: practicing on the testnet!” said an enthusiastic Beiko.
However, the exact date for The Merge from the mainnet is not yet fixed. The Ethereum Foundation website states the relatively vague deadline of the third or fourth quarter of 2022. “The date for the Ethereum mainnet Proof-of-Stake transition is not yet fixed. Any source claiming otherwise is likely a scam. Updates will be published on this blog,” said the Ethereum Foundation.