Vitalik Buterin Announces Revised Preponed Merge Date

• The increased hash rate on the network is forcing the Merge to occur earlier.
• In anticipation of the Bellatrix hard fork, the ETH price has risen by nearly 6%.

In a Tuesday tweet, Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin predicted that the Merge will go into effect between September 13 and 15. The increased hash rate on the network is forcing the Merge to occur earlier than September 15.

In a tweet dated September 6, Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin said that the Merge will likely take place between September 13 and 15. Additionally, he stresses the need for users to update their clients before the Bellatrix hard fork on the Beacon Chain at epoch 144896 at 11:34:47 UTC.

Highly Anticipated Merge

Epoch 144896 at 11:34:47 am UTC is when the Bellatrix upgrade will take place on the Beacon Chain. In anticipation of the Bellatrix hard fork, the ETH price has risen by nearly 6% and is trading at $1658 as per CMC.

Buterin tweeted:

“The merge is still expected to happen around Sep 13-15. What’s happening today is the Bellatrix hard fork, which *prepares* the chain for the merge. Still important though – make sure to update your clients!”

OKLink’s Ethereum Merge Countdown indicates that the network is almost 99 percent prepared for the Merge. The current terminal total difficulty (TTD) of 5875000000000000000 is sufficient to initiate the fusion of Ethereum Mainnet and Beacon Chain, and the network hash rate is 892.23 TH/s, which is over the required threshold of 872 TH/s.

The next upgrade will occur at the execution layer. It is called the Paris hard fork. This will then be followed by the Merge, which can take place around September 13-15. This is the suggested Merge date tracked by the Ethereum Foundation. The foundation suggests September 15 at 9:44:01 UTC. There can be a shift in the data depending on the hash rate. 

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