Ethereum’s anticipated transition to proof-of-stake (PoS) consensus, The Merge, is all but set following the third testnet (after Ropsten and Sepolia) integration of the Merge.
Ethereum software solutions provider Nethermind posted an update on the Goerli Testnet Merge, which happened at around 1:45 AM UTC. Ethereum core dev Tim Beiko separately shared a screen capture of Goerli’s transition.
There were a few hitches for some developers, including veteran Ethereum dev Marius van der Wijde but none a cause of concern for Ethereum users.
“A successful Merge […], the participation rate dropped and looks like there may have been an issue with one of the clients, but the Merge worked. We’ll likely see minor issues like this with the upgrade on mainnet too but the point is, the Merge worked,” Galaxy Digital’s researcher Christine Kim wrote.
The event marked the final testnet trial on Goerli, ushering in the mainnet integration on the Beacon Chain. A conclusive report on the event will be released in the coming days after the upgraded network has been evaluated.
State of affairs
Though the final date for The Merge has not been agreed upon, the progress thus far makes the mid-September target a realistic estimation. There has been talk around Ethereum, specifically on the post-merge environment. Last week, a small group within the Ethereum community comprising miners and other entities that stand to benefit in different ways proposed an ETH PoW hard fork after the transition to the PoS chain.
Acknowledging that this prospect would create chaos in the community in an interview last Friday, Ethereum cofounder Vitalik Buterin dismissed the chat that a potential forked chain can negatively impact the PoS chain.
Several exchanges, including Binance, have already announced their support for the event. Others like BitMEX, Huobi and OKX anticipate the probability of the Ethereum PoW hard fork giving rise to a new token and have shown interest in providing exposure. Tether and Circle, the respective issuers of USDT and USDC, also confirmed earlier this week that they would support the post-merge Ethereum PoS chain.
“Binance is closely monitoring the development of ‘The Merge’ scheduled to take place in Q3/Q4 2022 on the Ethereum network, which could potentially result in new forked tokens […] In case of new forked tokens, Binance will evaluate the support for distribution and withdrawal of the forked tokens,” the Binance team wrote.
Price action: ETH trading double digits up on the day
Ethereum’s native token, which traded in the green for the larger part of Wednesday on the back of positive sentiment after the July CPI data release, reacted positively to the news. The token printed a noticeable green candle as the market welcomed the news of the Goerli integration. The combined boost has seen the token’s market capital grow to $ $232.612 billion at the time of writing.
ETH/USD 7-day chart
CoinMarketCap data shows that the ETH/USD pair brushed $1,910, setting an intra-day high of $1918.
The premier altcoin is at the time of writing up 12% on the day. Overall, the token has gained around 17% in the last seven days. No other cryptocurrency among the top 10 (ranking by market capital) has gained more during this period. The 24-hr. trading volume figure, on the other hand, has swelled 86% to $29 billion.
To learn more about Ethereum visit our Investing in Ethereum guide.
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