Ethereum’s Merge Postponed till June

According to Ethereum core developer Tim Beiko, the much-anticipated switch to proof-of-stake may not happen until the fall. Following weeks of speculation, Ethereum core developer Tim Beiko announced in a tweet on Tuesday that the much-anticipated Ethereum Merge will be delayed. Beiko noted that the Network's switch to proof-of-stake is more likely to happen 'a few months later' than in June.

The Merge marks Ethereum's transition to a proof-of-stake security method. The network currently uses a resource-intensive proof-of-work mechanism known as Bitcoin. In this a decentralized network of computers competes to validate transactions. The switch to PoS, in which users reserve the power to protect the network by staking ether. It is projected to lower Ethereum's energy costs by 99 percent and simplify scaling.

Building a new consensus mechanism for Ethereum is a big undertaking. Ethereum's PoS architecture will provide a new set of game theory rules to guarantee network validators behave in good faith and a slew of engineering hurdles. A blunder would be devastating for the entire ecosystem, with billions of dollars.

Shifting Focus to Layers

Ethereum's high gas prices and poor speeds, which have rendered the network unsuitable for many applications. These are likely to persist even after Merge. Ethereum is at the heart of decentralized finance, game finance, and new financial technologies. Still, a slew of new PoS chains is biting at its heels, promising customers quicker and cheaper transactions.

Ethereum's initial plans for coindesk.com, which included the inclusion of sharding to boost network capacity by breaking up activity into parts. It could handle simultaneously, and has been replaced with the Merge. Sharding is still in the Ethereum roadmap. It has been postponed until 2023 to speed up the transition to PoS.

After the Merge, it's projected that a significant part of point network activity will migrate to layer 2 networks. It processes transactions on independent blockchains before packaging them and transferring them back down to the Ethereum base layer. Ether (ETH), Ethereum's native token, is the second-largest cryptocurrency.