With the Merge still at least 3 months away, core Ethereum developer Time Beiko offered a number of suggestions and reminders for developers and users of Ethereum.
Core Ethereum developer Tim Beiko has made public a series of suggestions and expectations about the upcoming Merge for application and protocol developers on Ethereum.
For the typical users of apps and protocols, Beiko merely suggested testing things resolute guarantee nothing is broken as a lot of tests are dead. He tweeted on Tuesday, “Run stuff, if something is unclear or broken, leave a comment.”
Beiko urged users and developers to “pay attention and make sure you are ready” for the Merge.
The Merge is that the highly complex and long-awaited moment once the Ethereum network switches from proof-of-work (PoW) to proof-of-stake (PoS) consensus. At that point, it'll be referred to as the consensus Layer and is predicted to occur in August this year.
Testing on many testnets has been targeted on ensuring that there are no cross-client issues or that existing applications don’t entirely break once the Merge. Beiko pointed out in an exceedingly separate Twitter thread that such issues area unit possible to be rare because “99% of changes have an effect on the protocol layer,” while “there area unit virtually no changes done to the application layer.”
Beiko explicit that developers should be aware that there'll be 2 vital changes to however good contracts work with the Merge. First, he reminded them that the strategy for beacon randomness, that helps run applications, can change. this can be necessary for the switch to PoS and was printed in an Ethereum Foundation (EF) update last November.
The second change will be that block times can shorten from 13 seconds per block to 12. As a result of this change, good contracts that use block production speed as a live of time can run one second faster after the Merge takes place.
Beiko showed an air of confidence that despite the delays in executing the Merge, potential problems are consolidated into a single echelon:
“Aside from cross-client testing and these two edge cases, the biggest risk of disruption is in ‘tooling and infra pipelines.’”
He over by assuring that if the other problems arise throughout the thorough testing and shadow forks going down, the Merge would be further delayed to ensure the safety of the network:
“At any point, if we find issues, we’ll obviously take the time to fix + address them before moving forward. Only then will we think about moving mainnet to proof of stake.”
ETH investors who are worried about coins being unlatched and drop when the Merge takes place will rest simple. DeceDeFi educator Korpi on Twitter explained on Mon that the Ether (ETH) staked on the Beacon Chain currently cannot be unlocked while not a later upgrade to the network once the Merge takes place. This includes rewards earned from staking.
( Brian Newar, Cointelegraph, 2022 )