Ethereum has had a successful second “Test-Merge” on the Sepolia testnet. This makes the industry’s most popular smart contract platform one step closer to transitioning to Proof-of-Stake. Despite the Test-Merge being a success, there were a few minor issues that needed to be addressed.
25 to 30 percent of validators offline
Terence Tsao, an Ethereum developer, shares on Twitter a small summary of The Merge on the Sepolia test network. Shortly after the update, 25 to 30 percent of validators went offline. The problem with these validators was that they didn’t have their configs in order. After they had provided them with an update, they all came back online.
The Test-Merges are a kind of “dress rehearsal” that helps Ethereum developers and independent developers understand what to expect during the real-life Merge. Although a Test-Merge is a good exercise for the real thing, Vitalik Buterin indicated during the livestream that the real Merge takes much more infrastructure than is present on the test networks.
“There may be some non-critical issues that arise during the Merge that we don’t catch with this test […] There are a lot of peripheral issues that are not taken into account during these tests and that is probably fine,” said Vitalik Buterin about the potential problems that could arise during the real Merge that is due to take place later this year.
The Ethereum rate
Meanwhile, the Ethereum price for the past 24 hours is a plus of 4.73 percent and the project stands at $1,171. Measured over the entire week, Ethereum even writes a plus of 7.15 percent. Despite the good news about The Merge and the impressive green numbers for the past week, Santiment warns of a potential sell-off.
The total amount of Ethereum on the exchanges has risen to 13.8 percent on July 4 and is at the highest point since January 3, 2022. The risk of a sell-off increases because in theory more Ethereum can be sold. As long as Ethereum is in a wallet outside the exchanges, it is more difficult to sell it quickly. At the moment, the number of Ethereum at the major exchanges has fallen again to 13.25 percent of the total supply.