Ethereum Merge Hopes Now Moved to August

cryptonews.com:

There is a chance that the much-anticipated Ethereum (ETH) Merge could happen already this August, according to Ethereum core developer Preston Van Loon. He also suggested that effort is being made to complete The Merge before the next difficulty bomb goes off.

Asked a variation of the ‘when Merge’ question at the Permissionless conference, Van Loon told the panel, which included a researcher at the Ethereum Foundation Justin Drake, that:

“It’s just the last few steps we have to take, and as far as we know, if everything goes according to plan, August – it just makes sense.”

The Merge is Ethereum's long-awaited upgrade that will see the current Ethereum Mainnet merge with the beacon chain proof-of-stake (PoS) system. Just yesterday, Cryptonews.com reported that the Ropsten public testnet, which allows for blockchain development to be tested before deployment on the mainnet, is estimated to undergo The Merge on June 8. It is the latest in a line of tests done in preparation for the main Ethereum blockchain to switch to the PoS consensus.

According to a tweet by the event co-host, the Bankless podcast, Drake said that the “stars are aligned” for the Merge to happen in August, but also that:

There is a “strong desire to make this happen before difficulty bomb in August.”

The difficulty bomb, also known as the Ice Age, is a feature that slows down the blocks, therefore the entire Ethereum network. While the switch to Ethereum 2.0 has been in the works for a long time, the developers came up with this difficulty bomb as a mechanism that artificially and gradually makes generating new blocks more difficult and mining unprofitable.

The Ice Age has already been moved multiple times, and the developers seem to want to avoid having to