Here At Last: The Ethereum Merge Is Officially Scheduled

We’ve been talking a lot about The Merge lately, and for good reason. Ethereum’s transition to proof-of-stake is one of the most anticipated events in crypto’s history, with many hopeful that it ushers in a golden era for Ethereum and decentralized finance.

After years of delays, it finally (sort of) has a date.

On either September 15th or 16th, the new era for Ethereum officially begins.

The Endgame

The catalyst for the date-setting was the completion of the last obstacle standing between Ethereum and The Merge: the merging of the Goerli testnet.

With that last hurdle successfully cleared, developers had the green light to set the Total Terminal Difficulty (TTD) to 58750000000000000000000. This means that the final proof-of-work block will be mined when this TTD is reached. After that, all subsequent blocks will be produced with proof-of-stake.

At the current mining rate, TTD is projected to be reached on September 15th. If the mining rate speeds up, TTD and The Merge will happen sooner. Likewise, If the mining rate slows down, TTD and The Merge will be delayed. That’s why the date is kind of, sort of the 15th or 16th.

A Quick Price Update

Since our first post on The Merge, ETH’s price has continued its steady ascent. It even temporarily broke $2000 on August 14th but has since retraced to the ~$1900 level, which is where it is currently hanging out.

Although The Merge is a bullish event, and these prices could very well look like a bargain in a few months, it might be best to proceed with some caution. Trading volume is still low, and on-chain gas prices are the lowest they’ve been in two years. This suggests that this rally might not have legs and is actually setting up to be a “sell the news” sort of situation. In any case, it’ll be interesting to see how ETH moves as The Merge gets closer.

Interestingly, Ethereum Classic (ETC) has done even better than ETH over the last month. For context, ETC is up a whopping ~175% since the beginning of July, whereas ETH has climbed only ~75% during the same time frame.

Why? Honestly, we aren’t sure.The likeliest explanation is it has something to do with miners advocating for a proof-of-work Ethereum fork. Whatever the case, be extra careful if you decide to get involved in this trade. The odds of ending up as exit liquidity seem especially high with this one.