- As per the current schedule, the Ropsten testnet shall undergo The Merge upgrade next month on June 8.
- The Ethereum Foundation has also doubled the rewards for its bug bounty program taking the ceiling to $500,000.
Ethereum developers have been gearing up for the much-awaited upgrade – The Merge – on the Ethereum blockchain network. As per the latest update, on June 8, the Ropsten testnet shall undergo the upgrade to the Proof-of-Stake (PoS) consensus.
The Merge upgrade basically seeks to switch Ethereum from the existing Proof-of-Work to the Proof-of-Stake consensus mechanism. This will make the Ethereum blockchain more scalable and environmentally friendly.
In the ETH-clients GitHub repository on Monday, May 18, the configuration code appeared, meant for upgrading the testnet. Last month, the Ethereum developers already conducted a shadow fork to start testing how the switch from PoW to PoS would work.
Unfortunately, things didn’t go as per plan with Ethereum Foundation developer Tim Beiko announcing that they have moved the upgrade to the latter half of 2022. “It won’t be June, but likely in a few months after. No firm date yet, but we’re definitely in the final chapter of PoW on Ethereum,” he said.
The Ethereum blockchain network is one big home to all crypto market verticals such as dApps, DeFi, NFTs, smart contracts, and much more. However, with too many players using the Ethereum network, it often faces the issue of congestion, high gas fee, and lack of scalability. The Ethereum 2.0 Pos network exactly seeks to address all these issues.
The Pos Ethereum 2.0 will drastically reduce the energy consumption of the Ethereum blockchain. Besides, it will also reduce ETH issuance by 90 percent creating deflationary pressure on the blockchain.
More rewards on Ethereum Foundation’s bug bounty program
While Ethereum developers are working on The Merge upgrade, the Ethereum Foundation has bumped up rewards for its bug bounty program launched last year. The program seeks to reward those who identify any critical vulnerabilities in the Ethereum network. It offers payouts in a well-designed tiered system.
Earlier, there were two separate programs for the executions on ETH1 and ETH2. Now, the Ethereum Foundation has combined them wherein bug hunters can earn up to $250,000 payable either in ETH or DAI. This is a significant jump from the earlier payouts of $50,000.
As Ethereum developments prepare for The Merge, they are wanting to make sure that there are no vulnerabilities in the PoS blockchain. Interestingly, the Ethereum Foundation has further doubled the max Ethereum bounty for reporting vulnerabilities in upgrades. The ceiling has been finally pushed to $500,000. In a blog post on Monday, May 16, Ethereum developer Fredrik Svantes wrote:
There are already multiple efforts being organized by client teams and the community to further increase knowledge and expertise across the two layers. Unifying the Bounty Program will further increase visibility and coordination efforts on identifying and mitigating vulnerabilities.
Related: Ahead of The Merge, cyber security firm Couldflare to run the Ethereum node experiment
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