ETH Co-Founder Vitalik Buterin Says The Merge Could Happen in August, There's Also 'Risk of Delay'

Following the statements from Ethereum developer Preston Van Loon at the Permissionless conference, Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin has further confirmed The Merge will likely happen in August. Buterin noted, however, that it’s quite possible there’s still a risk of delay, and The Merge could happen in September or October 2022.

The Merge Could Happen in August, Buterin Says

• Just recently, Vitalik Buterin spoke at the ETH Shanghai Web 3.0 Developer Summit and Ethereum’s co-founder discussed the highly-anticipated proof-of-stake (PoS) transition. The Merge is scheduled to go live on Ethereum’s testnet Ropsten in 18 days on June 8, 2022.
• During the ETH Shanghai Summit, Buterin explained that the transition will be a major test for the entire Ethereum ecosystem. “This will be a major test, larger than any of the tests that we have done before,” Buterin stressed. “Taking a large existing test network with many applications with proof-of-work, moving into proof-of-stake.”

• Furthermore, Buterin confirmed that The Merge may be implemented by August, as ETH software developer Preston Van Loon had said the same at the Permissionless conference. However, while Buterin did mention the month of August, he also eluded to delays.
• “If there are no problems then the merge will happen in August,” the Ethereum co-founder said. “But of course, there’s always a risk of problems. There’s also a risk of delays. And so September is possible and October is possible as well,” Buterin added.
• Meanwhile, The Merge is the first of Ethereum’s major upgrades following the London upgrade, which implemented ETH’s burn mechanism. Following The Merge, Ethereum will implement The Surge, The Verge, The Purge, and finally The Splurge.
• The Surge aims to help improve scaling by leveraging zero-knowledge rollups (ZK-rollups) via sharding techniques. Ethereum’s The Verge transition will apply Verkle trees in order to achieve statelessness by using the Merkle proof upgrade.

• The Purge will add an EVM simplification track and eliminate historical data and technical debt, according to the Ethereum roadmap. Finally, The Splurge revolves around “Miscellaneous but important extras.”
• Buterin also talked about The Surge and noted that after these two upgrades (Merge & Surge), Ethereum will be “a great system.”