By
Chimamanda U. Martha
April 24th, 2024
Ethereum developers successfully conduct the Merge upgrade on the Sepolia public testnet. However, they still encountered minor hiccups during the launch.
On Wednesday, July 6, Ethereum developers achieved a major milestone by successfully activating ‘The Merge’ upgrade on the Sepolia public testnet. This is yet another step towards launching the Ethereum 2.0 Proof-of-Stake (PoS) blockchain.
The Merge Ethereum Upgrade
During yesterday’s event, Sepolia’s proof-of-work chain (execution layer) “merged” with its proof-of-stake beacon chain (consensus layer). The goal was to check if the validator nodes from Sepolia’s two chains can work together. The same process shall happen during the Merge of the Ethereum mainnet.
Ethereum educator Anthony Sassano hosted the Sepolia Merge livestream on July 6. He later added that ‘The Merge’ has gone through successfully and that the developers will monitor the test in the next few days. Sassano noted:
Thanks to everyone who watched the Sepolia merge livestream!! The Sepolia merge transition went through successfully (and the chain finalized!) so now it’s time for monitoring over the next few days. Then we merge Goerli… …then mainnet The Merge is coming.
Ethereum protocol developer Terence Tsao called the Merge transition a success. However, added that nearly 25-30% of validators went offline post the Merge due to “wrong configs”. But Terence assured that the hiccups won’t delay the mainnet Merge any further.
With the success of the Sepolia testnet, the Ethereum developers will now implement The Merge on the Georli testnet.
ETH 2.0 Staking Crosses $15 Billion
As the Ethereum blockchain developments continue, the total number of Ethereum (ETH) staked with the deposit contracts on Ethereum 2.0 has crossed 13 million ETH. This is a new record high for the ETH staked after the launch of the Beacon Chain in December 2020.
Thus, the total value of staked ETH under the deposit contract of ETH 2.0 stands at $15 billion. However, the total value has taken a dive amid the recent crash in the ETH price. Back in December 2021, the total value of ETH staked in deposit contract stood at $40 billion. But since then, ETH has lost more than 70% of its value.
During yesterday’s live stream, Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin also shared his thoughts. He said that the challenges with the mainnet Merge will be a bit different as it will include “much more third-party infrastructure that isn’t present on the testnets”.
“So there might be non-critical issues like that that will just pop up in the Merge that we’re not catching with these tests […] There’s a lot of peripherals that are just not getting tested and that’s unavoidable and probably fine,” said Buterin.