Ethereum To Delayed Merge?, ETH Price Plunges Below $1,700
June 10 2022 - 6:51PM
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Ethereum has broken below $1,700 since July 2021. At that time,
ETH’s price was reacting to the downside due to an increase in
selling pressure across the crypto market. Related Reading
| TA: Ethereum Holds Key Support, Why ETH Must Clear This
Hurdle This time, Ethereum seems to be reacting to poor
macro-economic conditions, and a potential delay in its most
important milestone in recent history: The Merge. The event that
will complete ETH’s transition to a Proof-of-Stake (PoS)
blockchain. At the time of writing, Ethereum (ETH) trades at $1,680
with a 6% and 8% loss in the last 24-hours and 7-days,
respectively. ETH is one of the worst performers in the top 10 by
market cap followed by Solana (SOL), Dogecoin (DOGE), and XRP. The
Ethereum network recently saw the successful deployment of “The
Merge” on its oldest testnet, Ropsten. This was celebrated by the
community with many claiming a mainnet launch could be possible by
August or September this year. “The Merge” implementation on
Ropsten saw some difficulties, but ETH core developer Tim Beiko
claimed they were addressed and “all fixed”. The Difficulty Bomb is
part of the mechanism that will enable Ethereum to migrate to a PoS
consensus. This mechanism will progressively increase mining
difficulty and prevent these actors to support a second ETH based
on Proof-of-Work (PoW). As Beiko explained, the Difficulty Bomb is
already having an impact on the network: The bomb is being felt on
the network, and, in true bomb fashion, it appeared quicker than
predicted Block times are ~14s and the Arrow Glacier EIP (authored
by yours truly) predicted “a ~0.1 second delay to block time by
June 2022 and a ~0.5 second delay by July 2022. ETH core developers
agreed on delaying this mechanism for at least 2 months. This will
provide them with more time to work on the migration to a PoS
consensus. What A Difficulty Bomb Delayed Means For Ethereum
However, ETH core developers seem to disagree on what delaying the
Difficulty Bomb implies for Ethereum. Ben Edgington, Lead Product
Manager for Teku, an Eth2 client developed by ConsenSys, announced
the following: (…) we will push back the Ethereum difficulty bomb.
We say it won’t delay the Merge. I sincerely hope not. Every extra
week on PoW generates close to 1 Million tonnes of CO2 emissions.
Edgington believes developers should agree on a Merge mainnet
target. In that way, clients and the ETH community can “prepare”.
In that sense, Beiko replied that the event is still expected to
take place at some point from August to November this year. He
believes only a “catastrophic event” could delay “The Merge” this
year. Beiko concluded the following on setting a specific date for
“The Merge”: I guess my view is that having an explicit target, at
this point, basically wouldn’t change the speed of output from
client teams, at least on the EL (Execution Layer). We have many
implicit ones (devcon, bomb) as well as intrinsic motivation.
Related Reading | Bitcoin Spot To Derivatives Flow Forms
Historical Bullish Pattern Despite the progress on this important
ETH event, the market is already soft, and any potential signs of
weakness could contribute to an increase in selling pressure.
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