Tim Beiko (one of Ethereum’s most prominent developers) says the final chapter of Ethereum as a Proof of Work Network (PoW). The long-awaited Transition to Proof of Stake (PoS), however, may be delayed. It could happen later than expected.

Beiko tweets a response on the subject of the upcoming merging. She was responding to ETH miner, who asked if it would be appropriate for the mining community to pull the plug during the first month.

Beiko, who runs the core protocol meetings for Ethereum available on Github, replied saying: “It won’t be June, but likely in a few months after. No firm date yet, but we’re definitely in the final chapter of PoW on Ethereum”. Beiko strongly argued that miners shouldn’t invest in mining equipment.

This will not be in June but it is likely to happen within the next few months. We are certain that we are in the last chapter of PoW for Ethereum.

— Tim Beiko | timbeiko.eth (@TimBeiko) April 12, 2022

Early on Wednesday, other such similar signals appeared on Ethereum-related subreddits, with hints that the network’s transition to PoS could be delayed even further, with some suggesting dates as late as 2023.

Flexpool, an operator of ETH-mining pools, has published a statement that reads:

“We’ve been reviewing the code and running nodes on the merge testnets and we don’t believe they will be ready until 2023. Once they are made public, we plan to dedicate our developers to them and try our best to find bugs to delay the merge. This increases security. There is financial incentive for all miners and pools to join the testnets.”

On Monday the Ethereum dev team began the so-called shadow fork on the Ethereum mainnet, which acted as a rehearsal in order to predict any possible events that could occur during the network’s transition from PoW to PoS.

The test fork was successful, with minor problems being fixed. This is what the Ethereum team reported later. The devs will implement another shadowfork on April 22nd.

It is not yet known when Ethereum will officially transition to Proof of Stake. However, the crypto community has typically speculated that the network’s upgrade may happen in the first month of summer. Although the Ethereum team has explored migration options over many years, it has always been met with delays.

After the historical upgrade takes place, Ethereum’s blockchain will fully rely on the Proof of Stake mechanism, which will fundamentally change the way transactions are validated, making the network cheaper and more efficient, while also having lower energy consumption rates.

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