Ethereum has now completed its second-to-last major Merge trial on the public test network Sepolia, paving the way for its transition to the proof-of-stake (PoS) consensus mechanism.
While it's been judged mostly a success, it was not incident free.
The final trial of the Merge is set to occur on the Goerli network over the next few weeks before the official Merge on the Ethereum mainnet can be given the go ahead.
Ethereum educator Anthony Sassano, who hosted the Sepolia Merge livestream on YouTube on July 6, confirmed on Twitter that the Merge transition went through "successfully" and added that testnet will be monitored over the next few days.
Terence Tsao, an Ethereum protocol developer also said the Merge transition itself had been a success, but noted around 25-30% of validators went offline after the Merge due to “wrong configs.” However he added that “hiccups will not delay the Merge.”
Superphiz, a founding member of the ETHStaker Community cautioned during the stream however that the actual success of the Merge won’t be known “for several hours or even until tomorrow.”
The final trial will occur on the Goerli test network. Superphiz added that the timing of the Merge will depend on the reviews of the Sepolia test.
The testnet Merges are a form of “dress rehearsal” that are essential to allow Ethereum developers and independent project developers to understand what they can expect when the actual Merge takes place.
During the livestream, Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin admitted that one of the challenges facing the main network Merge will include “much more third-party infrastructure that isn’t present on the testnets.”
Related: Ethereum Name Service registrations surge by 200% amid lower gas fees
“So there might be non-critical issues like that that will just pop up in the Merge that we're not catching with these tests [...] There’s a lot of peripherals that are just not getting tested and that’s unavoidable and probably fine.”
Meanwhile, on exchanges…
Despite the news, Santiment has warned of a potential ETH sell-off with total ETH supply on exchanges reaching a new high of 13.8% on July 4, the highest since January 3, 2022.
As of July 7, the percentage has declined slightly with around 13.25% of the total ETH supply sitting on exchanges.
The price of Ethereum (ETH) is currently at $1,186 at the time of writing.
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