The “Bellatrix” upgrade ahead of the Ethereum merger will activate on Sept. 6, followed by the Ethereum mainnet merge between Sept.10-20, according to a blog published on Thursday by the Ethereum Foundation.
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Fast facts
- “The Merge” intends to shift the Ethereum blockchain from its current proof-of-work (PoW) mechanism to a proof-of-stake (PoS) model, a faster, more energy efficient, more secure way to scale projects. Ethereum has completed a series of work to convert the testnet to PoS, and will eventually move the mainnet to PoS.
- The blog said the Ethereum mainnet merge will happen in two steps, the “Bellatrix” and “Paris” upgrades. The Bellatrix upgrade brings Ethereum’s consensus layer – the Beacon Chain that introduces the PoS mechanism to Ethereum – into a state ready to merge.
- The Bellatrix upgrade will occur at epoch 144896, which means a real-world time of 11:34:47 UTC on Sept. 6. Epoch is the time unit that is used on Ethereum.
- The Paris upgrade will come after the Bellatrix upgrade, which will switch the Ethereum network from PoW to PoS.
- The Paris upgrade will be triggered when the “Total Terminal Difficulty” (TTD) reaches 58,750,000,000,000,000,000,000. TTD is a threshold difficulty of the final block mined in Ethereum before the merge; after TTD is achieved or exceeded, the next block will be produced by PoS.
- TTD achievement is expected between Sept.10-20. The first mainnet block produced under the PoS mechanism will occur approximately 13 minutes after the Paris upgrade.
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