pm

It certainly seems it will be remembered as a major success story for open p2p protocols on the global Internet of our time. A great multitude of developers and enthusiasts belonging or contributing to diverse teams spread across the world: developing, debating, and collaborating for years to arrive at the big event. And it's all been done very much in the public view: https://weekinethereumnews.com/ https://hackmd.io/@benjaminion/eth2_news https://github.com/ethereum/pm https://www.youtube.com/c/EthereumFoundation/videos Consensus Clients: https://github.com/sigp/lighthouse#readme https://github.com/ChainSafe/lodestar#readme https://github.com/status-im/nimbus-eth2#readme https://github.com/prysmaticlabs/prysm#readme https://github.com/ConsenSys/teku#readme Execution Clients: https://github.com/akula-bft/akula#readme https://github.com/h

I did some digging and the principles are elucidated by vitalik on his blog.[0] The principles are based on the fact that proof of work is antisocial, impractical or unrealistic. The 6 times this was discussed last year[1] in the ethereum devs meeting on zoom might also be of-interest. [0]: https://vitalik.ca/general/2016/12/29/pos_design.html [1]: https://github.com/ethereum/pm/issues/361

There is still no date but it's getting really close. You can track the progress here: https://github.com/ethereum/pm/blob/master/Merge/mainnet-rea... Notably, there is only 2 testnet merges left to do. Ethereum has 3 testnets to try things out. One testnet has already merge and is running on PoS (Ropsten testnet). The merge was a success although it allowed to uncover some minor issues. The next one, called Sepolia, is happening this week. After that, there is only one other testnet merge to occur, likely in August. If all that goes well a date will be set. Ethereum does have a way to force the death of PoW. The Ethereum protocol has always built-in the so-called "difficulty bomb". The difficulty bomb is simply a target date in the future when the mining difficulty starts rising exponentially. Making finding new blocks exponentially hard

What’s New in Eth2 is a biweekly newsletter that's a good resource for tracking progress toward PoS: https://hackmd.io/@benjaminion/eth2_news From the current edition: Go/no-go decision on doing the Merge or postponing the difficulty bomb to be discussed on the 29th of April [2022] ACD call. If it’s "go" then start merging the existing testnets at 2 week intervals with a view to doing the real thing in July [2022]. ACD call == AllCoreDevs meeting. Here's a summary of the most recent one (includes a link to a recording of the call): https://github.com/ethereum/pm/blob/master/AllCoreDevs-Meeti...

It's been slow, but progress is happening. There's already ~$28 billion worth of ETH staked on the beacon chain. Most of the engineering work for the merge has already happened. A post-merge testnet (Kintsugi) was launched a few weeks ago. If you look at the mainnet readiness checklist [1], the remaining work is largely testing and documentation. Hard to imagine how it could not happen at this point. [1] https://github.com/ethereum/pm/blob/master/Merge/mainnet-rea...

I should also add two more important pieces to this: 1. In-person meetings and real-time calls have been a major part of the work. There is an agenda and very good notes are taken during these sessions (https://github.com/ethereum/pm). The calls have been essential for coordinating in a more formal setting and to get a feel for when consensus is achieved on a particular topic or proposal. What threaded forums later added was the ability for others to get involved in the discussion, particularly those who are not core developers or not able to attend. 2. Another important medium has been GitHub issues (e.g. https://github.com/ethereum/EIPs/issues/2315). Proposals are submitted as a PR and, earlier in the evolution of the governance process, many people would comment on them. These were not ideal due the flat nature of the format. What gene

> Also, this hardfork seems to have been decided behind closed doors. Where is the mailing list discussion? Where did community members have a chance to raise concerns? https://github.com/ethereum/EIPs https://github.com/ethereum/pm/tree/master/All%20Core%20Devs... These changes should be no surprise to anyone who's made any effort at all to follow Ethereum development.