The timetable for the monumental Ethereum (ETH) merge to a proof-of-stake system is moving up by four days, according to Ansgar Dietrichs, a researcher at the Ethereum Foundation.
Dietrichs says “The Merge” date is now scheduled for September 15th, rather than the tentative September 19th date thrown out by Ethereum core developer Tim Beiko last month.
Dietrichs does note, however, that Ethereum’s hashrate generated by miners will likely be unpredictable in the days leading up to the Merge, meaning the actual date of the event could change.
The highly anticipated event will allow Ethereum’s mainnet to merge with its Beacon Chain, which already runs the proof-of-stake system. Ethereum currently utilizes a proof-of-work protocol.
The Merge aims to address the network’s scalability issues by setting the stage for future upgrades, including sharding.
According to Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin, the smart contract platform will eventually be capable of facilitating 100,000 transactions per second via second-layer solutions following the completion of the upgrade.
More than 13.28 million ETH worth nearly $24.76 billion has been staked into the ETH 2.0 deposit contract at time of writing, according to the Ethereum search engine Etherscan.
ETH is trading at $1,868 at time of writing. The second-ranked crypto asset by market cap is up more than 1.5% in the past 24 hours.
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