The Ethereum team has decided to delay the activation of the ‘difficulty bomb’ by two months, according to lead developer Tim Beiko.
In short, we agreed to the bomb delay. We were already over time, and want to be sure that we sanity check all the numbers before selecting an exact delay and deployment time, but we are aiming for a ~2 month delay, and for the upgrade to go live late June.
— Tim Beiko | timbeiko.eth 🐼 (@TimBeiko) June 10, 2022
“In short. We agreed to delay the bomb [difficulty]. We are all overdue and want to ensure that we have correctly checked all the numbers before choosing the exact delay and deployment time, but we are aiming for roughly a two-month delay and for the upgrade to go live in late June,” he wrote.
In May, the Ethereum developers tied the timelines for the mainnet’s transition to the Proof-of-Stake (PoS) consensus algorithm to an automatic increase in block time for the Proof-of-Work. According to Preston van Loon, the Merge process they plan to complete in August before the activation of the \”difficulty bomb\”.
Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin, at the virtual summit Eth Shanghai, also named August as the most likely time for the transition. However, he allowed for pushing the event to September–October in case of potential risks.
In June, the Ethereum team successfully transitioned the Ropsten testnet to PoS.