Ethereum’s Proof-of-Stake Is Expected To Happen by August

Ethereum’s developers revealed that their plan to move their algorithm fully to Proof-of-Stake (PoS) from Proof-of-Work (PoW) will happen by August.

The developers of the technology that powers the crypto ether (ETH) were guests in a panel on Permissionless, in which they talked about their plans to launch “The Merge” as soon as August. At the panel, Preston Van Loon, Ethereum core developer, shed light on how The Merge would make its debut if everything went as planned. He elaborated:

As far as we know, if everything goes to plan, [The Merge will launch on] August—it just makes sense. If we don’t have to move [the difficulty bomb], let’s do it as soon as we can.

Meanwhile, Ethereum researcher Justin Drake reassured this thought and encouraged the idea of making it happen by August. “Strong desire to make this happen before difficulty bomb in August,” he said.

The difficulty bomb was introduced years ago in order to keep the services going at the same level during transition into Proof-of-Stake. The difficulty bomb will reportedly make it hard for Proof-of-Work miners to solve the puzzle during the mining process. Also, this would eventually make mining difficult and decrease the chances of PoW mining.

The panel was held in an event sponsored by Bankless, the crypto finance company, and Blockworks, the crypto newsletter. The panel met a great reaction from the live audience, yet the online Twitter reactions weren’t that pleasant, as people were either upset about it or simply, not seeing it happening this soon.