The long-awaited London upgrade to the Ethereum network is drawing near as the code is deployed in the final testnet this week.

Ethereum’s London hard fork, which will usher in the EIP-1559 upgrade, is now slated for August 4th after it launched on the Rinkeby testnet on Thursday.

Ethereum developer Tim Beiko has released a testnet update that confirms that the code has now been successfully deployed in all three testnets.

And we stream live https://t.co/a5blKgbZym

All three test networks have now been successfully updated to London

Note: Since OpenEthereum is out of date after London, no lock has been placed on Kovan and it will likely be updated after the mainnet. https://t.co/rCnLDMjxZj

– Tim Beiko | timbeiko.eth (@TimBeiko) July 8, 2021

The mainnet start will take place at block 12965000, the expected date is August 4th. The first block was produced on June 24th in the Ropsten test network, and the Goerli test network implemented the hard fork on June 30th. Rinkeby is the last test phase before the mainnet goes live.

The London upgrade was named after the second annual Ethereum developer conference in 2015. It could deflate the network by optimizing the existing auction mechanism for network fees. The EIP will introduce a “base fee” instead of an available first price auction fee. According to the Ethereum software solutions company ConsenSys, the more transactions that take place, the more deflationary pressure caused by the burning of basic fees will theoretically increase.

However, it won’t necessarily lower gas charges through the EIP-1559 update as many had hoped. ConsenSys confirmed this in an upgrade guide released last month, although they did suggest lowering the fee slightly:

“As a side effect of a more predictable base charge, EIP-1559 could lead to some gas price reductions if we assume that the predictability of charges means that users are less likely to overpay for gas.”

Connected: London Tour Guide: What EIP-1559 Hard Fork Promises for Ethereum

The upgrade will burn some transaction fees, which will affect the Ethereum offering over time. A website has been set up to see this mechanism in action on various test networks. At the time of writing, over 89,000 ETH have been burned on the test nets, which at current prices have a face value of around $ 185 million.

The deflationary nature of the system could intensify as the network moves from mining to proof-of-stake consensus in the second half of 2022.