The developers of the Ethereum network met at the Core Devs Meeting, a meeting aimed at evaluating the steps before further development of the network. During the meeting, the developers identified additional issues. As a result, it could mean a delay for The Merge, a long-awaited network update.
Over speculation that the final connection of the Etherea blockchain with the new Beacon Chain may not occur within the specified period, the team is optimistic that it will be able to solve the problems in time.
The developers have scheduled another test. After running the update on Ropsten, it is now time for the Sepolia test network to receive the update. If all goes according to plan, Sepolia will host The Merge from July 6.
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Ethereum developers are facing problems
The developers had a long discussion about the issues surrounding the seventh shadow forum, which took place last week on Wednesday. Shadow fork is the name for a purpose branch created in the test network, consisting of predefined nodes.
These tests take place in private networks before switching to public networks. According to the developers, the last shadow fork failed. In fact, 20 % nodes went offline after activation, and others lost network connectivity during the test.
According to Alexey Sharp, an independent developer, part of the problem was related to the nature of the shadow forum and not to The Merge itself. The Erigon nodes failed due to the fork. Erigon's goal is to provide a faster, more modular and optimized implementation of Etherea.
The Besu Hyperledger system also encountered problems caused by a concurrency error in the Bonsai Tries nodes. According to the team, 25 % network validators use Besu software. These validators encountered problems after activating The Merge.
However, the developers remain convinced that on July 6, 2022, they will be able to deploy The Merge to the Sepolia test network. Before that, however, the Gray Glacier hard fork will take place on Wednesday (29th). Gray Glacier changes the upgrade parameters for the difficulty bomb and moves it back 700,000 blocks. That's about the equivalent of 100 days.
Theoretically, testing at Sepolia should be followed by another test, on the second Goerli test network. Some speculate that if the Goerli test were to take place in August, a month after the Sepolia test, the network upgrade could slip by September.
How ETH prices will react
Following the implementation of The Merge, a major supply constraint is expected ETH. The best estimates are something like up to three Bitcoin halvings.
Lark Davis, a major influencer and cryptocurrency investor, expects that The success of The Merge, combined with less ETH in the market, could cause the price to skyrocket.