Ethereum mining may still be 2 months old, developers say

Ethereum mining may still be 2 months old, developers say - mining ethThe difficulty bomb, which will put an end to Ethereum's proof-of-work (PoW) mining, could be activated in the first half of August. This is what the developers of the network predict after a meeting held last Friday.

What is it about?

With Ethereum's difficulty bomb, what will be done is to set the total difficulty so high that it will become impossible to mine a new block. This will stop the chain's proof-of-work mining, resulting in the creation of all new blocks on Ethereum 2.0, which will work on proof-of-stake (PoS) after the merger.

EIP-5133 (Ethereum Improvement Proposal) which puts a date on the previously announced difficulty bomb delay is now available online, although it has not yet been voted on. Its creation date is June 1st and its authors are developers Tomasz Kajetan Stanczak, Eric Marti Haynes and Josh Klopfenstein.

According to this proposal, the difficulty bomb should be activated "by the first half of August". The EIP also specifies that “it is possible that the hashrate [computing power] of the network will decrease considerably before the Merger”, and these factors are taken into consideration to determine when this phase will be carried out.

This postponement had already been anticipated, but without a precise date. The argument was to give the customers, who create the software for connecting the nodes to the network, time to prepare the necessary updates for the merger.

With all this, the developers aim to make the merger with Ethereum 2.0 happen without affecting the users of the network much. "I sincerely hope this doesn't delay the merger," said Ben Edgington, developer of Ethereum 2.0's Teku client, in a Twitter post.

According to programmer Marius Van Wijden, one of the protagonists of the Ethereum ecosystem, this will not affect the work done so far for the merger.

All of this was discussed and agreed during the last of the so-called Ethereum Dev Calls, meetings that the developers of this network hold periodically. In these sessions, issues related to network development are discussed. The latest so far is on Friday 10 June 2022 and can be found in full on YouTube or in written form on github.

Test networks are approaching merger

While the developers discuss the timing and methodology for the planned transition to Ethereum 2.0, the test networks serve as a testing ground to make sure everything goes according to plan.

On June 8, the fusion was successfully carried out on the Ropsten test network. As reported by this journal, the test network switched from PoW to PoS in the process. This result was considered an important step forward for subsequent tests and for the final merger, which is expected to take place in the second half of the year.

For now, the next step will be to create the Beacon chain on the Sepolia test network. This will take place on June 20, as reported by Crypto divulger Gucci on its Twitter feed.

The Beacon Chain will function as the original shard of the new blockchain. The mainnet already has its Beacon Chain since 2020 and recently hit the milestone of 400.000 validators with funds locked in its smart contract. These validators, fundamental to the proof-of-stake model, will be the ones who will ensure the functioning of the new network when Ethereum 2.0 goes into operation.