Ethereum Merge on Track as Third and Final Testnet Finalized, Transition to PoS Expected on September 19

Goerli, the third and final testnet of Ethereum has gone live through a “dress rehearsal” of the Merge. This follows the successful launch of the previous two testnet merges, Ropsten and Sepolia. The development has boosted the confidence of the community who believes that the Ethereum blockchain would certainly transition to a Proof of Stake on September 19. Many important developers and enthusiasts in the Ethereum community have expressed their excitement about the successful testnet.

“The Goerli testnet has been successfully merged and is now a full Proof of Stake chain. Next up is (finally) the Ethereum mainnet!! The Merge is coming,” tweeted Anthony Sassano, Podcaster/ETH proponent.

As many believe that the previous testnets were successful, some Ethereum developers including Marius van der Wijden think there were some minor issues. According to him, two different terminal blocks and non-updated nodes caused confusion in the network. He mentioned that this did not have any major effects on the blockchain despite slowing down the process slightly.

There has been so much anticipation surrounding the launch of the Ethereum mainnet Merge regardless of the founder, Vitalik Buterin’s statement that his project would be just 55% complete after this huge upgrade.

Ethereum has since its inception relied on the Proof of Work algorithm which is said to compete with countries in terms of energy consumption. The PoS model would reduce the network’s energy consumption by more than 99%. In addition, the Ethereum network would make a major step toward long-term scalability, security as well as sustainability goals.

After the Merge, the community is looking forward to another important upgrade called Sharding. Sharding will provide a greater capacity to the network and reduce pressure on the core network. This will be done by spreading the network’s database across shard chains horizontally.

According to the Ethereum website, Sharding would provide a significant enhancement to the “distribution of data storage requirements, enabling rollups to be even cheaper, and making nodes easier to operate.”

ETH investors have reacted positively to the final testnet launch as the market capitalization of the asset has surged by 10.9% in the last 24 hours according to CoinMarketCap data. The price has also surged to $1888. The ETH value currently makes up 19.8% of the total crypto market.