Ethereum Foundation confirms September dates for the Merge

Ethereum’s developers have officially confirmed September 6 as the date for Ethereum’s long-anticipated transition from proof of work to proof of stake, known as The Merge.

“Following years of hard work, Ethereum’s proof-of-stake upgrade is finally here!” the Ethereum Foundation wrote in a blog post on Wednesday. “The successful upgrade of all public testnets is now complete, and The Merge has been scheduled for the Ethereum mainnet.”

The Merge will be split into two upgrades, called Bellatrix and Paris. Bellatrix is timed to occur at 11:34 AM UTC on September 6 and Paris will be triggered sometime between September 10 and September 20, according to the blog post, which provided the image below. 

Source: Ethereum Foundation

Proof of stake relies on validators instead of miners. Instead of expending lots of computing power, like proof-of-work miners do, proof-of-stake validators lock up sums of money to prove their trustworthiness to the network. The switch has been a long-held goal for Ethereum’s developers. In the final testing step, the Goerli testnet successfully merged on August 10. 

The new blog post also includes links to download the necessary upgrades for the various Ethereum clients. Operators will need to do this before the Bellatrix update occurs. “Update your clients!” tweeted Ethereum Foundation comms lead Joseph Schweitzer.  

While this makes the date more official, Ethereum’s developers had previously suggested the September 6 date for the Bellatrix upgrade during a call on August 11. During that call, they also targeted the Paris upgrade to happen on September 15.  

Still, the date might change due to block times and hash rate fluctuations. The Paris upgrade could happen as many as five days earlier or five days later than expected. Should the hash rate drop significantly, the developers might manually override the chain — as they did on the Ropsten testnet. 

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