Key takeaways:
- Ropsten, the main Ethereum testnet, has undergone a merge combining its existing Proof-of-Work chain and the Proof-of-Stake Beacon Chain
- Ropsten’s transition to PoS is one of the final stages before the Ethereum mainchain transitions to the PoS consensus model
- Ethereum’s transition from PoW to PoS is expected to take place in the second half of this year
Ropsten’s PoW chain merges with PoS Beacon Chain
Yesterday, the primary public Ethereum testnet underwent a successful merge of the “old” Proof-of-Work (PoW) blockchain and the “new” Proof-of-Stake (PoS) Beacon Chain. Ropsten’s merge transition took place on June 8, as predicted by software engineer Terence Tsao in mid-May. On Wednesday, Tsao shared a tweet in celebration of the PoS being activated on Ropsten.
Ropsten’s transition from PoW to PoS is one of the final stages before the Ethereum mainchain merges with the Beacon Chain and ushers in the era of Ethereum 2.0. The transition is expected to alleviate some of the network congestion issues and bring down the cost of transactions on the network. Moreover, Ethereum’s energy footprint is expected to decrease in excess of 99% as the leading smart contract platform goes PoS later this year and moves away from energy-intensive PoW mining.
Earlier this year, devs stress tested the Ethereum network in a series of so-called shadow forks to identify potential bugs in the code and gauge the network’s ability to handle smart contracts. Shadow forks provide a sandbox environment for teams and developers to stress test the network to “get a sense of the post merge world,” explained Ethereum Foundation developer Parithosh Jayanthi in at the time.
The exact date of “The Merge” is not yet known. According to an estimate shared in April by Ethereum developer Tim Beiko, the highly anticipated event will take place a “few months after” June.
