Latest Developments About Ethereum

On 13 September, Ethereum developers decided on setting 15 September as the 2nd-quarter live date for the highly anticipated third hard fork (presumably last). The hard fork is aimed at fixing certain bugs on the Ethereum blockchain and will be done through a consensus of miners, clients, and exchanges.

While Ethereum developers set September 15 as the date when the highly anticipated Merge will take place, Aave is trying to strongly show its support for the PoS chain instead of PoW. Meanwhile, a crypto hedge fund manager said that Merge is not yet priced in the market.

The September 15 date mentioned during the Ethereum developer conference last week was confirmed at the conference held on Thursday, while the developers said that things will probably go as planned unless there is a big change in the hash rate. Ethereum developer Tim Beiko added:

Mainnet version is quite important.

While it's still unclear and could change, as Merge approaches, attendees discussed Ethereum's 11th mainnet "shadow fork" that took place on Thursday, and according to a summary Beiko shared on Twitter, the 34th node managed to do this without any problems and only one node was out of sync.

In addition, another topic shared during the conference was censorship resistance and whether the transition from a proof-of-work (PoW) consensus mechanism to proof-of-stake (PoS) would make the network less resistant to censorship.

Its developer, Marius van der Wijden, who is among those who expressed his thoughts on the subject, said that censorship resistance is something worth dying for.

It doesn't make sense for us to allow users to be censored on Ethereum, and in that case, I'd leave and start another job, Wijden said.

Ethereum's Terminal Total Difficulty (TTD) has been raised and reaffirmed.

In her summary on Twitter, Beiko wrote: In short, the TTD has been confirmed. The only thing that can cause the TTD to change is a huge drop in hash rate when Bellatrix happens.

Bellatrix is the upgrade that will start the entire Merge process, and it's thought to take about two weeks between it and the actual Merge, but it could be less.

According to BitInfoCharts data, the Ethereum hash rate on Thursday stood at 917.8 Thash/s, slightly lower than 951.2 recorded the day before.

Merge 'Not Priced'

Meanwhile, investor and founder of crypto hedge fund North Rock Digital, Hal Press, said in a recent news release on the Bankless podcast that Merge is "not priced in", suggesting that prices can be expected to rise as Merge approaches.

Explaining the reason for this, Press said that any ETH sale happening now and in the next few weeks is largely tactical and aimed to buy immediately before or as soon as Merge happens.

This dynamic means that clear-outs are being measured, Press added, adding that the excitement surrounding Merge has increased as its history has become the focus and is reflected in the mainstream media.

Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin also echoed Press's views in his comments in July. Speaking at the Ethereum Community Conference (EthCC), Buterin said that while Merge is increasingly in focus, it is not priced both from a market perspective and from a psychological narrative perspective.

Aave's PoS Support

As Merge approached, uncertainty began to arise in the community regarding potential forks of Ethereum. This follows calls from some miners to split the chain and protect the PoW chain after Ethereum migrates to PoS.

However, a proposal on the governance forum of major decentralized finance (DeFi) protocol Aave seeks to dispel doubts about whether Aave will support PoS.

The proposal states: "To ensure the protocol continues for the community, the Aave DAO should consider sending a strong message that the Aave protocol must remain connected to the Ethereum mainnet powered by proof of stake."

Meanwhile, Buterin reaffirmed her stance on the matter on Thursday, reiterating that she is not in favor of banning proof-of-work even though Ethereum has switched to proof-of-stake.

Incidentally, a reminder that I oppose banning PoW:https://t.co/KiClK2cUFL

— vitalik.eth (@VitalikButerin)August 17, 2022

At 21:04, ETH is trading at $1,709 and is down 8.3% in one day. ETH is up 10.8% in a month.