01 Aug 2022
Ethereum 2.0 is just around the corner
After years of discussions and hard work to bring proof-of-stake to Ethereum, the merge is well into the final testing stage. Only one more testnet remains: Goerli, and its associated Beacon Chain, Prater.
Terminal Total Difficulty (TTD) is the total difficulty required of the final block mined in Ethereum. TTD for the GoerliTestnet Merge has been set at 10,790,000, which means that the final testnet will go through The Merge transition around August 10th. The following block will be produced by Proof of Stake. Vitalik recently attended EthCC, where he laid out the long-term future for Ethereum, and the full talk can be found here.
Key takeaways: The Merge is a change of consensus mechanism, not an expansion of network capacity. Fees, for instance, are a function of blockspace demand, not consensus mechanism. But the ETH2 journey is just beginning, and solutions to gas fees, speed & scalability are coming from rollups and later upgrades that are all happening in parallel.