Ethereum’s highly anticipated move from being a proof-of-work to being a proof-of-stake blockchain continues to leave market participants in suspense. However, Ethereum core developer Tim Beiko projects that the transition could happen a few months after June.
PoW Ethereum is in its final chapter
Beiko first noted this while responding to an inquiry from an Ethereum miner on Twitter. Advising miners to “not invest more in mining equipment,” Beiko revealed that the merge, which would make PoW mining redundant, was coming soon.
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 tweeted.
In another tweet accompanied by a GitHub Ethereum roadmap update, Beiko elaborated on his statement to clarify concerns raised by the community. He wrote that a date for the merge will only be set when “client teams are confident that the software implementations have been thoroughly tested and are bug-free.”
He also highlighted a few events that need to happen before the merge can occur. At the moment, all client teams have in-progress implementations of The Merge that have been rigorously tested.
Once these clients work without issues on shadowforks, then testing will proceed to Ethereum testnets. Following the success of testnet implementation, a time will be set for mainnet implementation. All through the process, the community will receive updates, Beiko shared.
The update is coming after the network crossed a significant milestone with the launch of its first mainnet shadowfork this week. Parithosh Jayanthi, an Ethereum Foundation developer, said the shadowfork is a way to “stress test assumptions around syncing and state growth” for the proof-of-stake mainnet.
The Merge is expected to greatly boost ETH price
The highly anticipated Ethereum transition will not only be a plus for the blockchain’s prospects but also for the price of Ether (ETH). According to analysts, the price of ETH will be propelled to new highs post-merge.
Matt Hougan, the chief investment officer at Bitwise, said that the Merge would remodel Ether to be fully deflationary, as well as increase staking yield on the assets.
The merge will essentially remodel Ethereum and its native coin ETH, making them (we imagine) considerably extra interesting to a large swath of institutional traders, Hougan explained in an investor letter reported on by Business Insider.
Based on this, he expects the price of ETH to soar well above $5,000. ETH is trading at around $3,000, down 2.55% in the last 24 hours at the time of writing.