The Merge Testing Is 90% Complete, Says Ethereum’s Vitalik Buterin

Buterin asserted that Ethereum’s developers are working on five long-term stages that aim to improve the network’s overall capabilities. The first on the agenda is the Merge, which is 90% complete and needs to be tested only on Ropsten, he said.

• During the ongoing annual Ethereum conference, Buterin outlined the improvements the development team is working on for both the short- and long-term.
• With the protocol’s long-anticipated switch from PoW to PoS supposed to be coming later this year, Ethereum’s co-founder noted that most of the testing had been done.
• In fact, he said the Merge is only left to be tested on Ropsten, which should “happen quite soon.”
• CryptoPotato reported recently that the 9th shadow fork went live, which meant the start of the final trial phases of the Merge. At the time, one of Ethereum’s lead developers hinted that the event could take place as early as September this year.
• Buterin further added that validators will be able to start withdrawing the ETH they had locked in deposit contracts once the Merge occurs. He also said, “after the Merge you will be able to build an Ethereum client that does not even know the proof of work phase even happened.”
• Another phase included in Ethereum’s roadmap, called the Surge, will focus on increasing the network’s scalability for rollups through sharding, Buterin explained.
• He noted that once this roadmap comes to an end, Ethereum “will be able to process 100,000 transactions per second,” which would be a significant improvement from the current 15-20.