The transition to Proof-of-Stake, which has been presented as more scalable and environmentally friendly than Proof-of-Work, has been years in the making.
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A major milestone has just been achieved in Ethereum's quest to move to a Proof-of-Stake blockchain.
Goerli, the third and last public testnet, has now successfully switched over to this consensus algorithm — in what was described as the final dress rehearsal before next month's long-awaited merge.
Previously, the Merge was first tested on the Ropsten testnet back in June, and that was followed by the Sepolia testnet in July 2022.
The transition to proof-of-stake, which has been presented as more scalable and environmentally friendly than proof-of-work, has been years in the making.
Ether has rallied by 11% in 24 hours as news of the successful test emerged — hitting highs of $1,908.20 at one point.
No major technical issues have been reported after Goerli's merge, although Ethereum developer Marius van der Wijden did say there were a few minor delays, explaining:
"There was some confusion on the network because of two different terminal blocks and lots of non-updated nodes, so we didn't finalize earlier. We're still looking into what's happening, but so far it looks quite good."
But there was plenty for Ethereum enthusiasts to celebrate, with Giulio Rebuffo tweeting:
"Goerli is finally done. And with this, all testnets are merged, now onto the final boss."
This milestone is especially significant because of how Goerli "has a strong community and a lot of existing infrastructure supporting it" — with the Ethereum Foundation saying this testnet is most comparable to the mainnet.
What Now?
Next month's merge, which has been repeatedly delayed, will bring the era of mining on the Ethereum blockchain to a close.
Instead, validators who stake 32 ETH will be responsible for verifying transactions.
It's hoped this will be much less energy intensive than the status quo, and set the stage for further upgrades that'll enhance the number of transactions that the Ethereum network can handle.
Goerli was named after a train station in Berlin, and the next stop for developers is confirming when the merge should happen.
There were jubilant scenes in a Bankless livestream of the merge last night — attended by Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin — with Song A Day artist Jonathan Mann delivering a special acoustic performance that used the YouTube comments as lyrics.
