Summary:
- Ethereum core developers are in agreement that ETH’s difficulty bomb should be delayed by two to four months.
- The Ethereum developers also floated the idea of combining the difficulty bomb delay with the client releases for the Bellatrix hard fork on the Beacon Chain.
- An EIP needs to be proposed to the community for either decision.
Ethereum Core developers seem to be in consensus that ETH’s difficulty bomb should be delayed by two to four months. Furthermore, Ethereum developers are keen on not delaying the difficulty bomb by the ‘shorter end of the range.’
This is according to a Twitter update by Ethereum Senior Core Developer Tim Beiko, who also updated that the difficulty bomb could be combined with the client releases for the Bellatrix hard for on the Beacon Chain. He said:
One idea that was floated was to combine a bomb delay with the client releases for the Bellatrix hard fork on the Beacon Chain. At that point, we will also need EL releases, so you could have them fork too, and push back the bomb…
In terms of the delay itself, everyone seemed to agree that 2-4 months is what would be reasonable. Doing less than that is useless, and no one felt like we would need more than that. There seemed to be a slight preference for the shorter end of that range, too.
An EIP Proposal is Need to Delay the Difficulty Bomb
As with all the critical decisions on the Ethereum blockchain, Tim Beiko pointed out that a delay in ETH’s difficulty bomb was hinged upon the introduction of an Ethereum Improvement Proposal (EIP) for the community to get a better grasp of its implications and decide on whether it is a good idea.
Vitalik Buterin Anticipates the Ethereum Merge to Happen in August. September and October are also Possible.
Earlier this month and during the Ethereum Developer Summit in Shanghai, Vitalik Buterin mentioned that Ethereum’s Merge could occur in August this year. He went on to state that it could also happen in September or October.
To note is that Vitalik’s estimates of the Merge happening between August and October are in line with the difficulty bomb delay of two to four months.
