By Lucas Malizia, DeFi Analyst at Finanflix
But, first of all, what is the merge? It’s the fusion of the Beacon Chain and the Consensur Layer in order to form Ethereum’s (CRYPTO: ETH) next chapter. In very few words, it’s the switching of consensus protocols from today’s proof of work into Proof of stake.
The transition journey started on December 1st of 2020 with the launch of Beacon Chain, which kickstarted Phase 0.
Phase 1 was projected for mid-2021, but ended up being delayed into the first trimester of 2022 due to the difficulty in auditing the new code. This brought a sort of “summer” or temporal relief to GPU miners, as they were given an extra window to generate income or, at the very least, break even.
The beginning of June 2022 marked the launch of Sepolia, a testnet exclusive to the Beacon Chain meant to prepare the ground for the merge. To put it more clearly, it would be a sort of first test in order to see what issues developers would be faced …
Full story available on Benzinga.com