Ethereum’s Goerli testnet transitions to Proof-of-Stake

As the time approaches for the launch of the long-awaited Merge update, scheduled for 19 September, which will take the Ethereum network to the Proof-of-Stake consensus method, the last planned Goerli testnet has also transitioned.

Ethereum: transition of the last testnet

The decisive test was held Wednesday at 9:45 PM (CET), and the Ethereum Foundation announced that the Goerli testnet successfully transitioned to Proof-of-Stake shortly after the network’s total block difficulty exceeded 10,079,000.

And there we go! Goerli has merged ? ?

Shout out to all client teams, contributors and the whole #Ethereum ecosystem – what a moment to share with you all! #TheMerge is next

— Nethermind (@nethermindeth) August 11, 2022

Goerli was the last of three public testnets to perform a “general test” of the merge. After this, the core network merge is now ready for final launch.

The how and when of the final launch will be discussed by Ethereum’s developers next Thursday, but after so many delays it really seems that the date of 19 September may just be the right one for what many are calling one of the most important innovations in the cryptocurrency world.

Testnets, such as Goerli, allow developers to test the update and its operation, in order to make changes where necessary before the updates are implemented on the main blockchain. The result Wednesday night clearly showed that the Proof-of-Stake validation process substantially reduces the energy required to verify a block of transactions and also demonstrated that the fusion process works.

“Goerli has this badge of a bottom-up testnet”, said Josef Je, a developer who has worked with the Ethereum Foundation in an interview with CNBC, calling Goerli’s success decisive proof that the process works and therefore there is no longer any obstacle to the final launch of the Merge.

Tim Beiko, the coordinator of the development team working on the Merge, said that despite these encouraging results, they will continue to look for any problems or bugs in the coming days so that everything will be ready for the date set for the official launch. 

“We want to see the network finalizing and having a high participation rate amongst validators and also make sure we don’t hit any unexpected bugs or issues”,

Beiko said.

According to Beiko, the most important check to do is to see if the network is finalizing, which means having more than two-thirds of the validators online and making sure they accept the same chain history. Beiko believes this will take no more than 15 minutes under normal network conditions.

This will mean that the current Proof-of-Work (PoW) Ethereum mainnet protocol will join the Proof-of-Stake (PoS) Beacon Chain network and exist as a PoS blockchain.