Ethereum developers are thinking about delaying the Merge. It was supposed to happen in August, but the developers feel they need more time to iron out bugs and may push the rollout to the fall. Ethereum’s difficulty bomb code, which increases the difficulty to mine the token, will go off to signal the switch to proof-of-stake, making proof-of-work mining much more difficult. Tim Beiko, a lead developer, said there’s only a 1 to 10% chance the Merge will not happen in 2022. The value of the Ethereum has dropped to a 15-month low and is continuing a downward trend.
“Delaying it gives you time,” said Thomas Jay Rush, a participant in the call. “It looks bad to the community, but there’s nothing you can do about that.”
“If we do delay this, I think it should be a realistic delay to still maintain a sense of urgency,” Beiko said. “But too much pressure pushes teams to burn out, that’s also a situation we don’t want to be in.”
Sources: Ethereum Core Devs Meeting (via Bloomberg), Tom’s Hardware