Ethereum's final testnet Merge goes live

The Ethereum network's Merge event is rapidly reaching completion as the network's final testnet, Goerli, successfully changed its algorithms on Wednesday evening.

The Merge is a much-anticipated upgrade for the Ethereum network that would see it switch from the proof-of-work protocol to the eco-friendly and more scalable proof-of-stake protocol.

The Goerli Merge is the third of Ethereum's testnets to have completed the transition process. The Ropsten testnet switched to proof-of-stake in June, while the Sepolia testnet did the same in July.

A testnet is a controlled environment where developers try out and adjust their new products and updates before fully launching them on the main blockchain network.

This last testnet merge was successful without any issues, giving the green light for the final and complete Ethereum mainnet Merge scheduled for September 19.

Meanwhile, the value of ETH spiked by 14% in anticipation of the Goerli Merge on Wednesday. 

Since the successful Merge, Ethereum developers and other key personalities have been sharing their excitement on Twitter, including Tim Beiko, the lead Ethereum developer.

Beiko and other developers are still on high alert with the Goerli testnet Merge, looking for potential issues so they can quickly be resolved.

'We want to see the network finalizing and having a high participation rate amongst validators and also make sure we don't hit any unexpected bugs or issues,' said Beiko.

Apart from ensuring a high validator participation rate, Beiko also said they have to ensure transaction blocks aren't empty and that over two-thirds of validators reach a consensus on the chain history.

'If those three things look good, then there's a long list of secondary stuff to check, but at that point, things are going well,' said Beiko.

Once the Ethereum Merge is fully completed, the network's next step would be a sharding upgrade to significantly enhance the 'distribution of data storage requirements, enabling rollups to be even cheaper, and making nodes easier to operate' according to Ethereum's website.

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