Ethereum Proof-of-Stake Transition to Occur in August: Vitalik Buterin

Speaking at the ETH Shanghai Web 3.0 Developer Summit, Ethereum founder Vitalik Buterin and other key team members discussed the highly-anticipated proof-of-stake (PoS) network switch. Reports show that The Merge will go live on Ethereum’s testnet Ropsten on June 8.

At the recently-concluded summit, Buterin noted that the transition from proof-of-work (PoW) to proof-of-stake will be a testing event for the Ethereum ecosystem. The Canadian programmer explained that “This will be a major test, larger than any of the tests that we have done before.” He stressed that “Taking a large existing test network with many applications with proof-of-work, moving into proof-of-stake.”

Buterin also noted that The Merge could go live by August if everything goes according to plan, confirming a previous timeline forecast by ETH software developer Preston Van Loon at a conference. However, Buterin noted that there could be delays, and a date is not set in stone. He noted:

“If there are no problems, then the Merge will happen in August.

But of course, there’s always a risk of problems. There’s also a risk of delays. And so September is possible, and October is possible as well.”

The Merge will be Ethereum’s most ambitious upgrade since the London upgrade, which saw the network gain token-burning capabilities to make the ETH token a deflationary asset.

Ethereum to Record at Least Four More Network Updates After The Merge

According to reports, The Merge upgrade will be followed by The Surge, The Verge, The Purge, and finally, The Splurge.

The Surge will help the network improve scalability by leveraging zero-knowledge rollups (ZK-rollups) through sharding mechanisms.

The Verge network transition will implement “Verkle trees” to achieve statelessness through the use of the Merkle proof upgrade.

The Purge will implement an EVM simplification to track and eliminate historical data and technical debt, the Ethereum roadmap details.

Finally, The Splurge involves focusing on “Miscellaneous but important extras.”