Ethereum’s Long Awaited Eco-Friendly ‘Merge’ Update Slated for September Release

After repeated delays, the energy-efficient update to the Ethereum blockchain has finally got a release date. Officially named the ‘Merge' this update is tentatively slated to go live exactly two months from today, on September 19. This date was posted on Twitter by one of the developers from the Ethereum Foundation, Tim Beiko. While Beiko noted that this timeline is not concrete, he did say that its extremely exciting to see the upgrade come together. For now, the September 19 release date has been locked as a planning timeline.

Ethereum developers are recoding its mining protocol to the energy efficient ‘Proof-of-Stake' (PoS) model from its current ‘Proof-of-Work' (PoW) system. The Merge upgrade is expected to slash Ethereum's power consumption by 99.95 percent, its developers had claimed in a blog post last year.

Delaying its release yet again from the previously anticipated August launch, Beiko revealed that the network will be put through some more tests before its released for commercial use.

The development comes just days after the Merge successfully completed a trial on the public test network called Sepolia. This test marked the second-to-last trial test for the Merge.

These tests that the Merge is going through are for developers to understand how the upgraded network will look like, in terms of performance, upon its final release.

The developers are running extensive tests on the Ethereum revamp because decentralised finance (DeFi) apps reportedly worth over $100 billion (roughly Rs. 7,61,110 crore) are supported on the blockchain, and cannot be put in jeopardy.

Now, the final trial of the network will be held on what is called the Goerli test network some days later.

Now that the release timeline of the Merge is getting clearer, it is reflecting a positive effect on Ether prices as well.

On Monday, July 17, ETH climbed above the mark of $1,254 (roughly Rs. 1 lakh) after days of recovering lowly on the crypto ladder. As per Gadgets 360's crypto price tracker, ETH is up by 3.16 percent, taking its value to $1,442 (roughly Rs. 1.15 lakh).

Speaking to Gadgets 360, Edul Patel, the CEO and Co-founder of Mudrex noted that ETH managed to gain 17 percent over the past week, trading above the mark of $1,254 (roughly Rs. 1 lakh) for the first time in a month because the launch of its eco-friendly update called the Merge has come closer to completion.

Once switched to PoS mining operations, randomly selected miners will be able to validate transactions on the Ethereum blockchain, eliminating the requirement of dedicated machines and people to add new blocks.

PoW mining, on the other hand, needs a competitive validation method to confirm transactions and add new blocks to the blockchain. Hence, the operations of PoW mining are costlier to maintain because advanced machines need to be plugged to power sources at all times that are used by miners constantly to validate transactions.

Bitcoin uses PoW mining model and is infamous for disrupting power around its mining hubs.

Solana and Polygon, meanwhile, are PoS-based eco-friendly blockchains that are now rising in popularity.