Ethereum Delays Merge Update; Mining End Imminent As Proof-of-Work Approaches Final Chapter

The Merge, Ethereum's long-awaited shift from a proof-of-work (PoW) consensus mechanism to proof-of-stake (PoS), viewed as a milestone for the blockchain network, has been belayed until the second half of this year. Still, with PoW already in its final stages, it suggests that the end of Ethereum mining is imminent.

"It won't be June, but likely in a few months after. No firm date yet, but we're definitely in the final chapter of PoW on Ethereum," Tim Beiko, Ethereum Foundation developer, shared on Twitter on Wednesday.

By "final chapter," the developer means that Ethereum is about to come to a point where it will no longer rely on mining to ensure the network's safe operation.

Beiko also advised miners to stop "investing more in mining equipment at this point" in response to a Twitter user who goes by the name TripleSack, suggesting that ETH mining will soon become obsolete.

New details about the Merge update came after Ethereum passed a significant milestone Monday as it completed the first "shadow fork" of the network.

The team launched a merged testnet transitioning from PoW to PoS. The shadow fork is for developers so they can practice running nodes, deploying contracts and testing infrastructure to give them a better understanding of the merged Ethereum world.

Despite this, Ethereum DevOps engineer Parathi Jayanathi noted over the weekend that they discovered bugs during the three shadow forks on the Goerli testnet that still require to be resolved before the Merge update will be ready.

"We've done 3 shadow forks of Goerli with bugs varying from sync code to request timeouts being found. Watch the Ethereum R&D Discord channels for more. Goerli-shadow-fork-3 is live for anyone to test with, rated at the advanced difficulty to join," the engineer tweeted.

Ethereum currently relies on a proof-of-work system similar to Bitcoin, where a decentralized network of computers validates transactions. When Ethereum moves to proof-of-stake, users reserve the ability to secure the network by staking or locking up ether.

The PoS mechanism is anticipated to reduce 99% of the network energy cost and facilitate much easier Ethereum scaling.

Ethereum, the second cryptocurrency in terms of market capitalization, was trading up 1.87% at $3,111.44, with a 24-hour volume trading down of $15,827,704,716 as of 1:03 a.m. ET on April 14, based on data from CoinMarketCap.