Ethereum Foundation confirms merge will happen Sep. 10

Ethereum (ETH) Foundation has confirmed that the mainnet migration to a proof-of-stake network will be triggered at a Terminal Total Difficulty (TTD) of 58750000000000000000000, scheduled to happen between Sept. 10 to Sept. 20.

According to the Aug. 24 blog post, the first step towards the migration is the Bellatrix upgrade scheduled for 11:34 UTC on Sept. 6. The Kiln testnet will be deprecated on the same date.

The Foundation continued that the date for the merge would be determined by the proof-of-work hash rate, adding that “if more hash rate joins the network, TTD will be reached sooner. Similarly, if hash rate leaves the network, TTD will be reached later.” Several industry players had previously predicted that the merge could happen on Sept. 15.

The Foundation confirmed that all public testnets had been successfully upgraded.

Node operators must maintain an execution and consensus layer client to remain on the network after the merge. At the same time, “validators must ensure that user transactions and state transitions blocks that they create and attest to are valid.”

Meanwhile, the Foundation revealed a $1 million reward for white hat hackers who find critical vulnerabilities on the network between now and Sept. 8.

Reports had revealed that developers had found bugs in 2 Ethereum clients’ mainnet merge updates. However, these bugs are unlikely to stop or delay the merge.

Traders’ watches merge with keen interest

An Aug. 22 Kaiko report has highlighted that the funding rates for Ethereum have been mostly mixed this month.

According to the report, the digital asset recorded positive funding rates when trading at around $2000; however, the rates turned negative when its value crashed to about $1600 last week.

The report noted a “significant spike in open interest” as Ethereum crashed below $1600.

Kaiko also revealed that ETH’s volume market share hit the highest level since 2018. The report stated that the “volume market share of ETH-USD relative to BTC-USD aggregated on ten exchanges has surged from 38% mid-July 2022 to 57% last week,” thanks to the optimism surrounding the merge.