Ethereum developers have conducted a rehearsal merger on the Ropsten test network. It merged the blockchain of the same name, which operates on the Proof-of-Work algorithm, with the Beacon Chain, which works on the Proof-of-Stake algorithm.
That means that before the merger of the main Ethereum blockchain, Ethereum’s oldest test network switched to a Proof-of-Stake algorithm. The main purpose of the test network merger was to rehearse the main Ethereum network merger, scheduled for late 2022. Ethereum will go through the same merger process that the test blockchain has already done. However, because the cost of error in the case of ether will be too high, developers have at least two more tests ahead of them on the Goerli and Sepolia networks.
Among the software development teams in the Ropsten merger procedure were Prysm, Lodestar, Besu, Lighthouse, Teku, go-Ethereum, Nethermind, Nimbus and Erigon among them. During the merger, the Proof-of-Work version of Ropsten crossed the total complexity limit of 50 quadrillions. That prevented third-party users from interfering with the merge during the first test attempt. At that time, a user attempted to obtain a hash rate artificially.
Despite the successful test, the value of this cryptocurrency fell by 11% in a week. ETH is now at around $1,600 per unit. However, experts blame the drop not on the test merger, but on general market trends, with capitalization tending to fall on news of major global indices such as the S&P 500, the freezing of some assets due to sanctions against Russia, and new cryptocurrency legislation, which significantly complicates the market for investors and companies and forces crypto projects to disclose all information about coin holders.
The past merger is one element of verifying the correctness of the client software currently used to run Ethereum nodes. However, such a test merger is far from the first for Ethereum developers. In the past, they conducted a shadow fork on the main network and a merge on the Kiln test network.