Ethereum is the second largest cryptocurrency in the world, and it is a replacement for Bitcoin.
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EthereumThe second-largest cryptocurrency by market capitalization has had its final dress-up exercise ahead of a years-anticipated upgrade that is billed as one of the most important events in cryptocurrency history.
Since its inception almost a decade ago, ethereum has been mined through a so-called proof-of-work model. It involves complex mathematical equations that a large number of machines compete to solve. and this requires a lot of energy. Bitcoin mining follows a similar process.
Ethereum is working to move to a new model for securing the network called proof of stake. Instead of relying on energy-intensive mining, the new method requires users to use an existing ether cache to verify transactions and mint tokens. It consumes less energy and is expected to translate into faster operations.
The last test took place on Wednesday morning at 9.45 pm.
Ansgar Dietrichs, researcher at the Ethereum Foundation, he said in his tweet When it comes to a dry run like this, the most relevant indicator of success is looking at the finish time. He called it “another successful experiment”.
A research associate from Galaxy Digital noted that the participation rate dropped after the trial merger, and it seemed that there was a problem with one of the customers – but overall it worked.
“Successful Merge = chain complete,” Christine Kim tweetedadded that we’ll see similar types of issues with the update on the mainnet, “but the point is that Consolidation worked.”
Time the update will be discussed at the ethereum core developers meeting on Thursday. The previous instruction showed that there is a connection should enter into force in mid-September.
Ethereum’s transition has been pushed back many times over the past few years. Key developers tell CNBC that the merger is moving slowly to allow enough time for research, development and implementation.
the price of ether, the native token of the ethereum blockchain, has been bullish over the past month, up nearly 80%, including a 10% gain in the past 24 hours. However, it is still down by about half this year.
Here’s what happened
One of Ethereum’s testnets, or Goerli (named for a train station in Berlin), simulated the same process that the mainnet, or mainnet, will perform in September.
Testnets allow developers to test new things and make necessary adjustments before updates are rolled out to the main blockchain. Wednesday night’s exercise showed that the stake-of-stake verification process significantly reduces the energy needed to verify a block of transactions and also proved that the merge process works.
“Goerli has a bottom-up test network” said Josef Je, a developer who works with the Ethereum Foundation and now runs a permissionless peer-to-peer lending platform called PWN.
Je added that this was the most used testnet at this point – and proof of stake on Goerli will be almost identical to how things will work on the mainnet.
The The Ethereum Foundation blog echoed this This evaluation, saying that Goerli “is the closest to the main network that can be useful for testing smart contract interactions.”
to detect errors
Tim Beiko, coordinator of Ethereum’s protocol developers, told CNBC that they usually know “within minutes” whether a test is successful. But they will still be looking for many potential configuration issues in the coming hours and days so they can quickly fix them.
“We want to see the network finalize and have a high participation rate among validators, and also make sure we don’t run into any unexpected bugs or problems,” Beiko said.
Beiko said the easiest metric to track is participation rate, which is how many validators are online and performing their duties. If the numbers are down, the developers will have to figure out why.
Another key issue is related to operations. Ethereum processes transactions in groups known as blocks. Beiko said that one of the indicators that the test passed well will be that there are current transactions inside the blocks and that they are not idle.
The final key check is whether the network is finalized, meaning that more than two-thirds of the validators are online and agree on the same view of chain history. Beiko says it takes 15 minutes under normal network conditions.
“If those three things look good, there’s a long list of secondary items to check, but things are going well at this point,” Beiko said.
‘More Accessible’
Since December 2020, the ethereum community has been testing a stake-of-stake workflow on a chain called beacon, which works alongside the existing proof-of-work chain. Beacon has solved some major problems.
Beiko said the initial proposal required validators to have 1,500 ether, currently worth about $2.7 million, to use the system. The new proof-of-concept offers lower interest, asking interested users for just 32 ether, or about $57,600.
“It’s still not an insignificant amount, but it’s a more accessible system,” Beiko said.
There were other key developments ahead of Wednesday’s trial. In June, ethereum’s longest-running testnet, known as Ropsten, successfully integrated its proof-of-work execution layer with its proof-of-stake beacon chain. It was the first major dry run of the process that the parent network will go through next month, all should go according to plan.
Beiko said that the integration testing allowed developers to ensure that the software running the ethereum protocol is stable and that “everything built on the network is ready for the transition.”
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