Ethereum Undergoes Grey Glacier Hardfork, as the Network Inches Towards The Merge

Morning

So we have an new update on Ethereum network's long awaited transition to proof of stake consensus mechanism, often called 'The Merge'. Yesterday Ethereum successfully deployed the planned Grey Glacier hard fork, that will push the difficulty bomb three months ahead.

Grey Glacier hard fork was executed at a block height of 15,050,000 as planned and went on with no issues. The incumbent difficulty bomb in the upgrade will push the difficulty bomb 700,000 blocks ahead, i.e. roughly 100 days.

Ethereum core dev Tim Beiko took twitter following the harfork:

20 blocks past the fork and it's looking good: all monitored nodes except @OpenEthereumOrg, which doesn't support the fork, are in sync. No blocks on the old chain so far! https://t.co/kKdPwhmTrn pic.twitter.com/MX6ZaTrUzM

— Tim Beiko | timbeiko.eth 🐼 (@TimBeiko) June 30, 2022

What is difficulty bomb?

Difficulty bomb is a special code implanted in Ethereum code since 2015, designed to swiftly increase the mining difficulty making it extremely for miners to mine the new blocks on network thereby forcing them to shift from proof of work(PoW) to proof of stake(PoS) consensus mechanism, following the Merge.

Ethereum dev always wanted migration to PoS mechanism so they intentionally added the difficulty bomb into the code, acting as an impetus for them to push for the network upgrade to more energy efficient consensus mechanism.

Difficulty bomb going off ahead of merge would be catastrophic for the network, as block creation process will become too slow even for the complex process of Merge. Since Ethereum network had faced multiple delays in The Merge, so difficulty bomb have also been diffused multiple times in past. Last delaying was in 2021, called Arrow Glacier update which pushed the bomb by 6 months till now.

When will the Merge happen? No ultimate date have been announced so far but it has been estimated that the Merge will eventually happen in Q3/Q4 this year. The new delaying of 700000 block or 100 days pushed the difficulty bomb to mid October, indicates that Ethereum devs are confident that they will finally achieve Merge before the October difficulty bomb goes off.

Ethereum network have been moving slowly although steadily towards the Merge. First test net called Ropsten has already went through the successful merge last month, where as the second test net called Sepolia is also gearing up for Merge in next few days. After Sepolia only one test net will be left to be merged before the main net finally start transitioning.

There have been growing concerns in wider Ethereum community regarding the repeated delay in Merge. And Ethereum beacon chain stakers are growing restless as their beacon chain staked Ethereum remains locked till the Merge happens. I guess we can only hope that the Merge will finally happen this time, as Ethereum price has already taken a strong beating during the current winter season.

Posted Using LeoFinance ^Beta