The Ethereum network is approaching the merge phase of its critical transition from consensus mining proof-of-work (PoW) to proof-of-stake (PoS). Ethereum (ETH) developers proposed a perpetual merge date during a conference call on Thursday.
During this conference call, Ethereum lead developer Tim Beiko, who leads the lead protocol meetings, offered September 19 as a tentative target date for the merger. The kernel developers received no objection to the proposed deadline.
Later, Ethereum developer superphiz.eth tweeted about the merger roadmap and also clarified that the proposed target date should be seen as a roadmap rather than a deadline.
The timeline for this merger is not final, but it is very exciting to see it come together. See this as a planning timeline and be on the lookout for official announcements! https://t.co/ttutBceZ21 pic.twitter.com/MY8VFOv0SI
— superphiz.eth (@superphiz) July 14, 2022
This merger schedule is not final, but it is very exciting to see. Consider this a planning timeline and stay tuned for official announcements! https://t.co/ttutBceZ21 pic.twitter.com/MY8VFOv0SI
— superphiz.eth (@superphiz) July 14, 2022
The transition process of Ethereum to ETH 2.0 based on PoS began on December 1, 2020, when Beacon Chain was launched, starting phase 0 of the transition. Phase 1 of the program was due to launch in mid-2021 but was delayed to Q1 2022 due to unfinished work and code audit complexity.
In early June this year, the Sepolia Beacon Chain testnet went live, setting the stage for the merge dress exercise to provide valuable technical insights to Ethereum network developers. Seplia was finally merged with the network on July 7th.
The final test of the merger will take place on the Goerli network and is planned for the second week of August. After the migration, the official merge, scheduled for the second half of September, will be a priority for developers.
Ethereum’s transition to a PoS-based network is expected to reduce its power consumption by 99% and the introduction of clipping (planned for Q1 2023) would make the network scalable and comparable to centralized payment processors.
Also Read: Vitalik Says Proof-of-Stake Is A “Solution” To Ethereum’s Environmental Problems
The PoS vs PoW debate has been going on for a long time, with PoS makers claiming it is more environmentally friendly and just as secure, although PoW proponents, including Jack Dorsey, have called PoS centralized and not they are so sure.
Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin has been strongly defending PoS recently, claiming that, contrary to popular belief, PoS does not include voting on protocol parameters, such as proof of work (PoW). Buterin also explained that nodes will reject invalid blocks in both cases.
Pro-tip: if there is a longstanding tradition of people debating A vs B based on deep arguments involving math, economics and moral philosophy, and you end up saying “B is dumb because of a one-line technique of definitions” , you are probably wrong. https://t.co/22N0OaHyz1
— vitalik.eth (@VitalikButerin) July 3, 2022
Pro-tip: If there’s a long tradition of people debating A vs B based on deep arguments involving math, economics, and moral philosophy, and you come up saying “B is stupid because of a one-line technicality about definitions .”, you are probably wrong. https://t.co/22N0OaHyz1-vitalik.eth (@VitalikButerin) July 3, 2022
As Buterin continues to fight for PoS, a recent report from HOPR highlighted some of the major vulnerabilities that could become critical post-merger.
“We must emphasize that this is not an emergency: it does not affect any funds today. But this will be a big issue after the merger and the validators will be encouraged to break each other to get a share of MEV’s millions of dollars.”
The report suggests that validators on the network release their IP addresses when broadcasting attestations and blocks linked to their public key, but those validators are known in advance, allowing for highly targeted and selective attacks (DoS or otherwise) against future validation.
Tea @Teku_ConsenSys inspected by @Quantstamp the issue is even labeled as “Mitigated” which is wrong in our eyes and again describes our efforts to raise awareness of this privacy and the resulting security issue.
5/15— HOPR (@hoprnet) July 12, 2022
@Quantstamp’s audit of @Teku_ConsenSys even labels the issue as “mitigation”, which we believe is wrong and encourages us to do more to raise awareness of this privacy and security issue. 5/15 — HOPR (@hoprnet) July 12, 2022
The HOPR team noted that an audit report even labeled the issue as “mitigated”, which is not true as the hackers are not limited to the Teku node (DoS) attack.
