The long-awaited Ethereum (ETH) merge has again successfully passed an important test. The second-to-last major trial merge was performed on the Ethereum network’s Sepolia tesnet. That means that the actual merge on the Ethereum network is one step closer.
Ethereum test merge
The merge, formerly known as the Ethereum 2.0 Update, will make major change to the network. The biggest of those changes is the switch from a proof of work (PoW) consensus model to a proof of stake (PoS) consensus model. This will cause the energy consumption of the network to plummet.
The most recent test of the merge was a success. However, not everything went 100% according to plan. A number of minor incidents took place. For example, between 25% and 30% of the validators went offline during the test due to incorrect configurations.
However, Terence Tsao, an Ethereum developer, indicated that these incidents do not detract from the overall success of the test. In addition, he stated that such minor issues will not cause the merge on the mainnet will be postponed.
Sepolia summary:
– Merge transition itself was a success
– 25-30% of the validators went offline shortly after the merge
– The offline validators were due to wrong configs
– Since then, the offline parties have updated their configs, and validators are up(cont)
— terence.eth (@terencechain) July 6, 2022
Also the founder of the Ethereum network, Vitalik Buterin, gave to that it is virtually impossible to test everything down to the smallest detail. There’s probably a few things that will be overlooked, but according to Buterin, this isn’t a problem:
“So there may be non-critical issues in the merge that we don’t notice with these tests […] There are a lot of peripherals that just don’t get tested and that’s unavoidable and probably fine.”
The next step for the Ethereum network
The test is still underway at the time of writing. It may take a few more days before all processes are finally completed. So theoretically there is still a chance that something crucial will go wrong, although according to the developers this is unlikely.
The next step for Ethereum is the merge on the Goerli testnet. If this test is also successfully passed, then the long-awaited merge will finally take place on the mainnet.
Thanks to everyone who watched the Sepolia merge livestream!!
The Sepolia merge transition went through successfully (and the chain finalized!) so now it’s time for monitoring over the next few days.
Then we merge Goerli…
…then mainnet
The Merge is coming
— sassal.eth 🦇🔊🐼 (@sassal0x) July 6, 2022