As a reminder, the update of the Etherium network is one of the major events in the cryptocurrency industry, among those planned for 2022. The update will make the blockchain not only more energy efficient, but also more productive.

The day before, developers were commenting on the timing of the network update. According to the preliminary version, the update should be expected in August. However, they note that August is an ideal deadline to count on in the absence of any problems. Accordingly, in theory, the Etherium team may not be able to meet the specified timeframe.

And given the current comments, a version with a late update seems more than likely.

When to wait for Etherium on PoS?

Beiko urged users and developers to “pay attention and make sure everything is ready” for the event itself. As a reminder, the “merge” or so-called merge is the moment when the current consensus algorithm-based Ethereum chain Proof-of-Work (PoW) will merge with an alternative blockchain based on the Proof-of-Stake (PoS) algorithm. As we’ve already noted, the event itself is due to take place tentatively in August, which means it’s about three months away.

Before the final transition, the project’s network processes were tested in testnetworks – alternative circuits designed specifically for testing without having to spend real cryptocurrency. Generally, after the merger, the probability of major problems is very low, as “almost all changes will be done at the protocol level, not the application level,” assures Beiko.

According to Cointelegraph’s sources, developers should be aware that there will be two significant changes to the operation of smart contracts and the network as a whole during the merger.

First, there will be a change in the method of randomisation that enables applications to work. This is a requirement for moving to PoS and was published by the Ethereum Foundation (EF) last November. Secondly, the block time will be reduced from 13 seconds to 12 seconds. As a result of this change, smart contracts that use block mining speed as a measure of time will run one second faster after the merge.

ETH volume growth on the Etherium Stacking Deposit Contract

Beiko is confident that despite delays in executing the final transition to PoS, potential problems have been consolidated into a single echelon. Here’s his rejoinder.

Aside from cross-client testing and these two extreme cases, the biggest risk of failure is related to tooling and key infrastructure.

If any other problems arise during testing, the merger will be delayed to ensure network security.

At any point, if we find problems, we will certainly spend time fixing and resolving them before moving forward. Only after that will we consider moving the network to Proof-of-Stake.

In other words, Etherium has reached the “finish line” for the upgrade that the market has been expecting for several years now. There may be new obstacles along the way, though, which will take some more time to overcome. On top of that, Beiko himself has hinted that the Ethereum Foundation is not ruling out the possibility of another postponement of the merger.


The EIP-4345 proposal, announced at the end of 2021, is further evidence that a move to a Proof-of-Stake consensus algorithm is a distinct possibility. It suggested a postponement of the so-called complexity bomb, a mechanism for increasing the complexity of ETH mining and gradually slowing down the blockchain, which was originally created to accelerate the transition to PoS.

So, according to the proposal, the complexity bomb has been proposed to be postponed until June 2022, with the possibility of a further postponement. Well now the talk for an Efirium update is at best in August, not June. So the delay in the update has happened even now.

Text of proposal EIP-4345

The field of decentralised finance (DeFi), which is associated with Etherium among others, could also soon receive new regulations. These were discussed at the annual meeting of the World Economic Forum. Eva Kiley, Vice President of the European Parliament, said during her speech at the event that projects in the DeFi sector are not truly decentralised, which is why they need proper regulation. Here is the expert’s rejoinder, cited by Cointelegraph.

We have to have safeguards to understand who the developer is, who controls the project, who has access to the private keys, whether someone can change the code or not, what jurisdiction it all operates in. We have to make sure we understand how it all works. It is not an easy task.

Vice-President of the European Parliament Eva Kylie

Notably, Kylie is an advocate of Bitcoin and decentralisation. In one of her interviews, she stated that blockchain gives tools to strengthen and improve existing financial systems at the expense of trust and stability.


We believe that it is unlikely that there will be a perfect timeline for updating Etherium, as the developers have been working on moving the blockchain to a new consensus algorithm for several years now. In addition, they themselves now acknowledge that any bug will take time to fix, as huge sums of blockchain investors are at stake. Accordingly, they have no choice but to roll out a perfect product with adequate security - and that is labour-intensive.

Until that happens, we recommend mining ETH with video cards in the 2Miners pool. It is profitable and lucrative even for single video card owners.