The Ethereum Foundation officially confirmed the dates for the Merge on Wednesday, sharing details of what to expect as the transition to proof-of-stake gets under way.
The merge will be activated first on the Beacon Chain with the Bellatrix Upgrade, which is scheduled for epoch 144896 on the Beacon Chain on 6 September, according to the details shared by the Ethereum Foundation. It will set the rest of the process for the merge in motion.
After that, Paris, the executional layer’s portion of the transition, will get triggered on reaching the terminal total difficulty (TTD) of 58,750,000,000,000,000,000,000, which is expected between September 10-20. Once the difficulty level on the executional layer exceeds the TTD, block creation through proof-of-work crypto mining would not be possible. The subsequent block would be produced through proof-of-stake consensus by a Beacon Chain validator.
Once Beacon Chain finalizes the block, the merge is considered officially complete. As per the calculation, the first block under the proof-of-stake consensus mechanism would be formed exactly 13 minutes or 2 epoch after the TTD-block is produced.
The Ethereum Foundation has also shared other technical details of the Merge and also announced an enhanced merge bug bounty bonus of up to $1 million.
Ethereum’s proof-of-stake transition has been two years in making and the final dates come after successful dress rehearsals on multiple test network environments including Ropsten, Sepolia, and Goerli.
