A Comprehensive Look at Ethereum and The Merge: Part One

The Ethereum merge has been one of the most widely anticipated events of 2022. If successful, the merge would officially transition the Ethereum network from its existing proof-of-work (PoW) consensus mechanism to proof-of-stake (PoS), a long-awaited change that has been a key part of the Ethereum vision since its inception. With the activation of the Bellatrix upgrade on September 6th, the merge process has officially begun and will be considered complete pending the successful activation of the Paris upgrade, now expected to be around September 15th.

The eventual move to PoS consensus has always been a major component of the Ethereum development roadmap, as highlighted by the intrinsic “difficulty bomb” feature implemented in one of the first ever Ethereum protocol upgrades in 2015. Difficulty refers to the amount of computational work required for miners to find a block, typically denominated in terahashes (TH). On Ethereum, the difficulty is automatically adjusted every block to ensure a consistent block time, which can be easily calculated per block by taking the timestamp of the most recent block and subtracting the timestamp of the previous block.