Ethereum at the door of proof of stake – Since its creation in 2015, the network Ethereum (ETH) aims to move from proof of work to proof of stake. In practice, this transition will take place through “The Merge”a mechanism to connect the execution layer to the consensus layer of the beacon chain.
The Merge: the long-awaited update
As we have just seen, the transition from proof of work to proof of stake is a long-planned evolution. However, this was initially not a priority in the update formerly called Ethereum 2.0.
At the beginning of the year, the debates concerning the deployment of theEIP 1559 aimed at modifying the fee system has led to a significant discord between developers and miners. Thus, faced with this update that they considered unfair, the miners began to pressure the developers. Faced with this escalation of tension, Vitalik Buterin imagined The Merge update. This aims to anticipate the transition from proof of work to proof of stake.
In practice, this aims to connect the execution layer of Ethereum, namely DeFi, smart contracts, … to the consensus layer in proof of stake provided by the beacon chain.
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The Merge is coming soon
Since then, Ethereum developers and various customers have been working on implementing this update. At the same time, several devnets, then testnets, made it possible to test the deployment of The Merge on a large scale.
After the first Kintsugi testnetdeployed at the end of December 2021, the developers have just deployed a second and probably last testnet for The Merge, dubbed “Kiln”.
This was deployed on Monday, March 14 and allows developers as well as node operators to test the latest specifications of The Merge.
On his side, Tim Beikodeveloper of Ethereum, encouraged all nodes, application or service developers to join Kiln:
“It is strongly recommended that node operators, application developers, stakers, tools/infra providers test their configurations on the network. »
This testnet will be the last testnet specialized in the deployment of The Merge. Once Kiln is finalized, the developers will deploy The Merge to the various historic Ethereum testnets, such as Goerly or Ropsten. This deployment will mark a final test phase before the final deployment from The Merge on the mainnet. This should take place during the month of Juneif no delay is encountered in the meantime.
For its part, the beacon chain keeps breaking records. Indeed, it has just exceeded the bar of 10 million ETH deposited on the deposit contract allowing validators to take part in the validation process. In total, this represents the modest sum of $26 billion in ETH tokens.
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