During a call on Thursday, Ethereum (ETH) developers mentioned potential dates for the Merge – the massive and much-anticipated event when Ethereum moves from the proof-of-work (PoW) consensus mechanism to proof-of-stake (PoS).
The dates mentioned in the document shared during the call include September 15, 16, and 20.
Notably, an upgrade that will start the entire Merge process will have to happen first. This upgrade is called Bellatrix, and about two weeks need to pass between it and the actual Merge.
There was also a discussion about speeding up the hashrate so that the time between Bellatrix and the Merge would be shortened from 14 to 7 days, or a 10-days “compromise”.
There also needs to be a sufficient amount of time before the Merge in case something with Bellatrix goes wrong, they said.
All this said, most developers seem to be in favor of seeing Bellatrix on September 6, which means that the Merge may follow on the 20th (or earlier). Another possibility is to have Bellatrix on the first day of September, then the Merge on the 15th.
The first scenario goes along with previous estimates. In mid-July, developer Tim Beiko proposed September 19 as the tentative date.
During this most recent call, the developers also said that they want to avoid having the Merge on a weekend, and some said to avoid Friday for the Merge so not to hit the weekend.
There will be another call next week when the developers will discuss the tentative dates again. Importantly, there is no exact date for the Merge yet.
Meanwhile, the developers also discussed the Goerli testnet Merge that happened on Thursday. Though some issues were noted, including a bug in one of the clients for which they say there is a fix, the participants in the call agreed that this merge was successful. The testnet merge saw the Goerli testnet merge with the Prater testnet, a PoS beacon chain, and represents the final test before the actual Merge takes place.
The two previous testnet merges, Ropsten and Sepolia, were considered successful as well.
