Ethereum 2.0 (The Official Merge of Blockchains) Launch in AUGUST!?
Speaking at the Permissionless 2022 Conference this week in Florida, Ethereum Foundation Sharding researcher Justin Drake said:
“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 than elaborated, saying...
“As far as we know, if everything goes to plan, August—it just makes sense. If we don't have to move, let's do it as soon as we can.””
Finally, giving his reasoning behind the date...
“Strong desire to make this happen before difficulty bomb in August. Stars are aligned.”
WHAT IS A DIFFICULTY BOMB?
The big deal about Ethereum 2.0 is the change to Proof Of Stake mining, the essentials you need to know are: this no longer requires the use of power-hungry mining rigs used in the current 'Proof Of Work' mining.
The current type of mining is considered bad for the environment, because miners have computer processors working at maximum levels to solve mathematical puzzles, included in this process is encrypting and processing transactions, and creating newly minted coins which are given to miners as a their reward.
The difficulty bomb was created by Ethereum developers in 2016 with the merge to 2.0 in mind. Once it begins, the bomb will exponentially increase the difficulty level of the puzzles required for proof of work mining, eventually making that mining impossible to do.
The difficulty bomb is intended to stop miners who wish to continue mining the Ethereum 1.0 (Proof of Work) chain once the network has fully moved to Ethereum 2.0 (Proof of Stake).
The old and new method were supposed to overlap for awhile before the difficulty bomb kicks in, but they've lagged so long on Ethereum 2.0's launch that back in 2016 when they scheduled the difficulty bomb, they imagined Ethereum 2.0 would have launched long before now.
A SHORT HISTORY:
Nov 2017 "The Ethereum Killer Is Ethereum 2.0" Nasdaq reported.
June 2019 "Ethereum “ETH 2.0” Genesis Block May Launch in January 2020" Blocknomi reported
Feb 2020 "95% Confidence': Ethereum Developers Pencil In July 2020 for Eth 2.0 Launch" Coindesk reported.
May 2020 "Vitalik Buterin Says Much-Delayed Ethereum 2.0 Still on Track for July Launch" Coindesk reported.
From this point onward, there's a never-ending supply of articles saying the launch is near, sometimes based on nothing and sometime fueled by statements from Ethereum developers that imply this is the case.
SO, DOES THIS MEAN WE CAN DEFINITELY EXPECT THE MERGE COMPLETE AND ETHEREUM 2.0 UP AND OPERATIONAL BY AUGUST?
Nope. Developers can propose pushing it back, it's happened before.
While it would be yet another failed milestone, something most developers would find embarrassing, in the case of Ethereum's dev team it's just another entry on the massive list of all the other meaningless deadlines they gave the public.
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Author: Mark Pippen
London News Desk
Breaking Crypto News
