Ethereum has entered the final sprint for the much-anticipated Merge event after Goerli; the third and final test network has successfully transitioned to Proof-of-Stake (PoS).
The Goerli testnet merger was announced at the end of April with two phases, starting with the Bellatrix upgrade on Aug 4. The second step, called Paris, was activated today after the mining difficulty (TTD) on Goerli reached 10,790,000.
In the second upgrade phase, the developers merged the source code of Goerli with Prater, the PoS test network corresponding to the Beacon Chain that is running the current Ethereum parallel. In order to avoid any chain disputes, both operators will also perform their client software updates simultaneously.
According to the Ethereum Foundation, Goerli Merge is the last chance to ensure that their PoS validators are configured correctly before going to the mainnet.
Earlier this summer, the Ethereum team conducted a successful merge on the Sepolia and Ropsten testnets. Bringing The Merge to testnets is necessary to ensure the upgrade works appropriately on all tesnets before going to mainnet.
As explained by VOC, The Merge is Ethereum's most significant upgrade since its launch in 2015 and will officially put an end to ETH mining with its heavily used Proof-of-Work (PoW) mechanism. The current energy, replaced with the Proof-of-Stake (PoS) model, is expected to improve network scalability and be more environmentally friendly by more than 99%.
The Ethereum community is in an upbeat mood today following the successful test. Key developers and figures from around this ecosystem have taken to Twitter with showers enthusiasm for what they feel will be another step forward in the right direction.
However, some people have noted that there were minor issues in the previous two testnet merges, which are still present in this test.
It turns out that there was some confusion on the network because two different terminal blocks and lots of non-updated nodes slowed down the process slightly, but everything seems to be going well anyway.
According to the official schedule published by the development team, the next step will be to perform a full merge on the Ethereum mainnet. The final upgrade is expected to take place in September. Prior to the above news, Ethereum surpassed the $1,900 mark and is currently trading around the $1,868 mark on Binance.
Ethereum's much-anticipated upgrade, The Merge, is the main price driver in the cryptocurrency market, according to analysts at banking giant JPMorgan.
In a note to clients, investment bank analyst Kenneth Worthington addressed the recent price recovery in the digital asset market after a steep drop in June. As reported by several news outlets, Worthington even highlighted that the crypto market could have "found a floor."
Bitcoin and Ether, the two leading cryptocurrencies, have rallied about 36% and 90%, respectively, since the lows in mid-June. The global digital currency market capitalization has also risen, regaining its crucial level of $1 trillion.
The market had tumbled after the dramatic collapse of $40 billion Terra, and the broader spillover effects hurt the solvency capacity of several companies in the sector, including crypto hedge fund Three Arrows Capital and crypto broker Voyager Digital, two firms that have now filed for bankruptcy.
In his note, the JPMorgan analyst mentioned these events and identified the now more limited contagion effect of the implosion as one of the factors responsible for the recovery.
However, beyond this catalyst, the investment giant pointed to the long-awaited transition of Ethereum as the critical factor that has motivated the recent price rebound.
Amid these advances, ETH has remarkably recovered. The second largest cryptocurrency traded below $900 on June 18 but has since risen significantly to above $1,890.
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