Merge

On June 8, the public Ropsten testnet transitioned from Proof-of-Work consensus to Proof-of-Stake.

Ethereum developers foiled a “mischievous” miner’s attempt to expedite Ethereum’s transition to Proof-of-Stake on a public testnet by two weeks. Developers expect Ethereum’s Eth2 Beacon Chain to merge with Ethereum’s mainnet this autumn. The transition, known as “The Merge”, will change the chain to Proof-of-Stake consensus and abandon Proof-of-Work miners.  Ethereum’s developers want to trial…

The most recent test processed mainnet transactions on a “shadow fork” – a subset of proof-of-work nodes that had been merged with the Beacon Chain to process proof-of-stake transactions.

Ethereum's transition to Proof-of-Stake this year is expected to cut energy use by 99%.