Activating the Bellatrix upgrade on the Ethereum blockchain initiates the merge, which is likely to be completed around the 13th-16th. September. The Ethereum blockchain merger will officially begin, probably sometime between September 13th and 16th. The Bellatrix upgrade, the last hard fork in the pre-merger network, began on Tuesday, marking the start of Ethereum’s long-awaited transition from proof-of-work (PoW) to proof-of-stake (PoS).
Bellatrix’s innovation prepares the Ethereum PoS Beacon chain, also known as the consensus layer, to merge with the execution layer of the Ethereum mainnet.
The Terminal Total Difficulty (TTD) value that triggers the pairing is set to 58,750,000,000,000,000,000,000. This number will represent the total difficulty of all my Ethereum blocks and is expected to be reached between September 13th and 16th. Current forecasts suggest that this will happen around September 15th. When the TTD number is reached, the network merges the execution layer with the new PoS consensus layer, allowing the chain to continue using the new system for issuing and validating transaction blocks.
According to the Ethereum Foundation, a non-profit organization that funds the development of the Ethereum ecosystem, the merger will reduce the network’s energy consumption by 99.95 percent and lay the groundwork for further improvements to its core infrastructure.
During the merge, the difficulty of the Ethereum PoW network will increase to the point where no new blocks can be mined. The Merge has been around for a long time and Beacon Chain was only launched in December 2020.
Last month, Ethereum merged its Goerli testnet (testnet) from PoW to PoS, marking the third and final general attempt to merge the mainnet. The completion of the merger will mark the end of a chapter in Ethereum’s energy-intensive proof-of-work. The next step in Ethereum’s roadmap includes increased fees and transaction speeds through sharding and aggregation. Ether (ETH) last traded at $1,665, up 6.24% over the past 24 hours
