JUST IN: This is when Ethereum's Merge hard fork will be activated

Ethereum Merge is closer to the successful completion of the Sepolia testnet. The final step before Ethereum’s transition to Proof-of-Stake is the Goerli test. Protocol developers assured Ethereum holders of no further delays in the Merge timeline. 

Also read: How miners are preparing for Ethereum’s Merge and the implications on ETH price

Ethereum Merge hard fork imminent 

Ethereum Merge inches closer after the successful completion of the Sepolia test. Developers have successfully completed the penultimate test environment network merge. Sepolia was the second of three public testnets to run through the Merge. 

After the successful completion of Ropsten and Sepolia, Goerli is the next in line of tests, ahead of Ethereum’s transition from Proof-of-Work to Proof-of-Stake. Ropsten was completed on June 8. The penultimate test’s success was key to the Ethereum Merge timeline. 

In the Sepolia test, the network went to Proof-of-Stake when Terminal Total Difficulty (TTD) exceeded 17,000,000,000,000,000 at around 17:00 GMT. No significant glitches were reported in the Sepolia test and it was a two-step process. Operators updated their consensus layer and execution layer clients together. 

Sepolia merge was activated in two phases, the first at an epoch height on the Beacon Chain and the second upon hitting the total difficulty value on the execution layer.

Staking on ETH2 crosses $15 billion

The total volume of Ethereum staked with deposit contracts on ETH2 has crossed 13 million ETH. This is a new record high for Ethereum staked after the launch of Beacon Chain in December 2020. 

The value of total ETH staked is $15 billion. The value of ETH staked has plummeted in response to Ethereum price drop. In December 2021, the value of ETH in the deposit contract was $40 billion, but with a 70% drop  since then, it has driven the USD value of ETH2 staked down. 

Vitalik Buterin comments on Ethereum Merge

Vitalik Buterin, the co-founder of Ethereum, shared his thoughts on the Ethereum Merge. Buterin believes challenges associated with the mainnet Merge will be different as it will include, “much more third-party infrastructure that isn’t present on the testnets.”

Buterin was quoted as saying, 

So there might be non-critical issues like that that will just pop up in the Merge that we’re not catching with these tests […] There’s a lot of peripherals that are just not getting tested and that’s unavoidable and probably fine.

What Ethereum developers think

Terence Tsao, an Ethereum core developer, shared a summary of the Sepolia Merge on his Twitter handle. Tsao summarized Sepolia Merge in four key points:

• Merge transition itself was a success 
• 25-30% of the validators went offline shortly after the merge
• The offline validators were due to wrong configs
• Since then, the offline parties have updated their configs, and validators are up

Tsao explained that there was no client bug and the hiccups noted during the test will not delay the Ethereum Merge. Testnets enable interested parties to test their setups and their configuration. Its better to identify hiccups now, rather than wait for mainnet Merge. 

Analysts believe Ethereum price could rally

Akash Girimath, leading crypto analyst at FXStreet, has evaluated the Ethereum price chart and noted that bulls are in control of the altcoin’s trend. Ethereum price could rally to $1,284, and collect the buy-stop liquidity resting above this level. If the uptrend continues, the bullish target for Ethereum price is $1,425. 

Girimath identified key levels in Ethereum price. For more information, check this video: