Ethereum Testnet Beacon Chain Launched and Ready for Trial Merge

The Sepolia testnet beacon chain has gone live, laying the groundwork for its merger rehearsal, providing valuable technical insights for Ethereum network developers.

After merging with its dedicated beacon chain, the Sepolia testnet will begin consensus using Proof-of-Stake (PoS) instead of Proof-of-Work (PoW), which will provide data on what might happen when the Ethereum mainnet executes the merge.

An exact date for Sepolia's merger has yet to be determined.

The testnet merge is critical for Ethereum developers and independent project developers using the Ethereum network to understand what they can expect when the actual merge occurs. Just like on the testnet, the Ethereum mainnet merger will transition the entire network to PoS consensus and reduce Ethereum’s energy consumption by 99.9%.

Sepolia launches October 2021. Core ethereum developer Tim Beiko confirmed in April that the Ropsten testnet will be phased out and replaced by Sepolia over time. As such, projects running applications on Ropsten have been urged to migrate their work to Sepolia to avoid complications.

Public testnets like Sepolia and Ropsten aim to replicate the operating conditions of their respective mainnets without affecting the live mainnet. Ropsten is the longest running testnet launched in 2016. It was merged on June 8th, the first instance of the ethereum merge trial run.

The official merger date on the Ethereum mainnet has been pushed back multiple times. It is now scheduled to be completed in August 2022, but due to the delay of the difficulty bomb, that date may be further pushed back. When complete, it will result in the consensus layer, formerly known as Ethereum 2.0.

The difficulty bomb is a feature of the Ethereum network that will disincentivize ETH miners using physical devices by greatly increasing the difficulty of producing new blocks.

According to the Cointelegraph Price Index, ETH price has edged up by 3.53% over the past 24 hours and is currently trading at $1,126.