Ethereum Goerli Testnet Merge Set To Go Live in 48 Hours

Key Insights:

• The Ethereum Goerli merge will take place on August 11.
• Ethereum will transition to proof-of-stake sometime in September.
• Support for p-hard fork ETH tokens is already appearing.

The second biggest cryptocurrency network in the world is about to witness one of the most significant events of its existence as Ethereum shifts from proof-of-work to proof-of-stake over the next few weeks.

The final testnet merge will occur on August 11 with the Goerli merge.

Ethereum Goerli Testnet Merge

After years of planning and preparation, Ethereum is now just weeks away from the highly anticipated Merge event happening sometime in September.

Before that happens, Goerli, the last of three testnets, will be going through the transition from proof-of-work (PoW) to proof-of-stake (PoS) on August 11.

If all goes well, a slot height will be chosen for the Bellatrix upgrade on the Beacon Chain mainnet, and eventually, a difficulty value will be set for the Mainnet transition from proof of work to proof of stake.

September 19 is the soft deadline for The Merge. However, the most recent update from the team’s official blog made it clear that this depends upon the success of the Goerli merge.

As long as the testnet transition goes well, the developers will continue with the deployment process bringing Proof of Stake (PoS) to the network.

For the unversed, the arrival of PoS will shift the block generation process from mining to validation, making the network around 99.95% more energy efficient.

Instead of requiring energy-intensive miners to validate transactions on the network, proof-of-stake will enable users to verify transactions by simply staking, or locking-in their ETH on the blockchain.

With miners set to lose out on revenue following the Merge, some prominent crypto members have hinted at a potential hard fork of the Ethereum blockchain.

This would give rise to a PoW Ethereum token which some exchanges have already said they may support.

For example, the founder of Tron and Poloniex Exchange owner, Justin Sun tweeted:

“We currently have more than 1 million ETH. If Ethereum hard fork succeeds, we will donate some forked ETHW to ETHW community and developers to build ethereum ecosystem. (sic)”

However, Ethereum PoW will eventually be completely eradicated from the network as the development team is expected to deploy the difficulty bomb sometime this year.

This bomb will elevate the difficulty of mining a block to inoperable levels incentivising the network to shift to PoS.

This will make Ethereum a Proof of Stake only chain, which will immediately make it less harmful to the environment and more resistant to 51% attacks.

Ethereum on the Charts

As The Merge approaches, investors are considering the impact this event would have on the price action of ETH.

ETH has bounced significantly from its low its June, but still has a long way to go to reach its all-time high back in November 2021.

ETH is currently trading at $1690 at the time of writing, following a trendline towards $2,000.

The price indicators are suggesting the rally will continue, with the Parabolic SAR maintaining an uptrend for almost two weeks now.

The white dots of the indicator have not moved above the candlesticks in a long time, and as long as that continues, ETH will likely continue rising.

This notion is supported also by the Relative Strength Index (RSI) which indicates the rally still has some room to go.

Some selling pressure may come in directly after the Goerli merge as some traders “buy the rumours and sell the news” but overall, ETH looks to be in a good position to continue its current rally.