Ethereum (ETH) developers have called upon the crypto community to help out in testing the highly anticipated Merge between the Ethereum mainnet and the Proof of Stake (PoS)-based Beacon Chain.
The Merge is a great milestone towards the transition to Ethereum 2.0. The long-awaited upgrade will enable the Ethereum network to shift swiftly from its current Proof of Work (PoW) consensus mechanism to the new Proof of Stake (PoS). Upon success, the Ether protocol will reduce its energy consumption rate by 99%.
In a November 29 announcement, Marius van der Wijden, one of the Ethereum developers, confirmed the formation of a new self-guided program that ushers and urges all crypto volunteers to participate in Ethereum Merge upgrade testing.
Testing is the best way to contribute to #Ethereum. We are starting a new program to get the community involved in testing the merge.
If you want to do your part in getting Ethereum to Proof of Stake as soon as possible and save the environment, #dm me pic.twitter.com/WIxpRBIDPB
— MariusVanDerWijden (@vdWijden) November 29, 2021
The new program is divided into non-technical users, developers with limited experience in blockchain, and highly technical and experienced blockchain developers. The self-guided program provides non-technical users with tasks such as setting up consensus layer clients, reporting network failures, and sending transactions.
This program has also tasked technical users to run their validators, deploy and test smart contracts and set up their testnets. Lastly, the highly technical and experienced users are tasked with reviewing various specs, proposing invalid blocks, and splitting the network by voting on invalid blocks.
The program has politely called all participants to submit their work as soon as possible and share it online under the “TestingTheMerge” hashtag on Twitter.
In the same context, Wijden has urged all participants to use the Ethereum R&D discord channel to maintain proper communication throughout the testing program.
While somewhat teasing the crypto community to participate in testing, Wijden said:
“The program is not compensated, but if you find a critical bug (consensus issue/panic), I’ll buy you a beverage of your choice at the next DevCon!”
#TestingTheMerge https://t.co/CYoRX0vfGN
— smallfish (@S_Rank_lvl) November 29, 2021
Data acquired from Ethereum.org suggest that the Merger between the Beacon chain and Ethereum mainnet may be officially complete by Q1 or Q2 of 2022. Although the Merge is considered the final chapter in the Ethereum evolution, there is still some more work before the full transition to ETH 2.0 and sharding is complete.
As the Ethereum Merge upgrade edges closer, the final piece of the puzzle now shifts towards the Shard chains upgrade slated for late 2022 (AKA ‘sharding’).
The upgrade will see the network’s load spread across 64 new chains to help the network scale its capabilities in a decentralized manner. As a result, the Ethereum network will ramp up its transaction per second and bring down gas fees.
