Knowledge

What Does The Gray Glacier Upgrade Mean For Ethereum Merge?

The Ethereum Network is expected to perform the Gray Glacier upgrade at a block height of 15,050,000, occurring on June 30 at approximately 12:00 UTC. During this time, exchanges will temporarily suspend Ethereum and some ERC-20 services, including deposits and withdrawals. Holders should consult their exchange for specific downtime.

What Does The Gray Glacier Upgrade Mean For Ethereum Merge? 3

What is Ethereum Gray Glacier?

The Ethereum Gray Glacier upgrade is a key component in the transition to PoS ETH 2.0. It involves delaying the difficulty bomb by 700,000 blocks, which means the bomb won’t explode until around October 2022.

Node operators and miners will need to upgrade to the latest client list. Otherwise, they will be stuck on the old pre-fork chain, not supporting operations on the newly upgraded network. The holder is not required to take action unless instructed.

“Gray Glacier was chosen because it literally merges into another glacier, just like how Ethereum’s execution layer will soon be merged with the Beacon Chain!”

Difficulty Bomb

The difficulty bomb increases mining difficulty exponentially over time until the Ice Age occurs. At this point, the network will become so hard to mine that it will have to stop producing blocks.

The Ethereum difficulty bomb is a mechanism that increases the difficulty of puzzles in the PoW mining algorithm at a predetermined number of blocks, resulting in longer block times than usual (and thus fewer ETH rewards for miners).

The goal is to force miners to gradually stop mining the Ethereum 1.0 PoW chain as the network transitions to PoS.

What Does The Gray Glacier Upgrade Mean For Ethereum Merge? 4

This process needs to be coordinated with the mainnet implementation of The Merge, where the PoW and PoS chains will merge into one chain.

Delaying the difficulty bomb shows that the developers are not ready to implement The Merge and have to postpone the difficulty bomb. Otherwise, the network will become unminable before ETH 2.0 is ready. The developers had previously delayed the difficulty bomb to December 2021.

All in all, ETH 2.0 is constantly being delayed to its detriment. One Twitter user commented that holders are angry and frustrated by the continued failures.

DISCLAIMER: The Information on this website is provided as general market commentary and does not constitute investment advice. We encourage you to do your own research before investing.

Join CoinCu Telegram to keep track of news: https://t.me/coincunews

Follow CoinCu Youtube Channel | Follow CoinCu Facebook page

Harold

CoinCu News

Harold

With a passion for untangling the complexities of the financial world, I've spent over four years in financial journalism, covering everything from traditional equities to the cutting edge of venture capital. "The financial markets are a fascinating puzzle," I often say, "and I love helping people make sense of them." That's what drives me to bring clear and insightful financial journalism to the readers of Coincu.