Ethereum Ropsten Testnet Set for Proof-of-Stake Merge in June

Ethereum takes another step towards proof-of-stake (PoS) by merging its Ropsten testnet.

Ethereum is slowly but surely approaching The Merge. It plans to complete a “huge testing milestone” by merging the Ropsten testnet on June 8. Ethereum DevOps engineer Parathi Jayanath made a pull request in the eth-clients GitHub repository on Monday, which means the implementation is well underway.

After the first mainnet shadow fork in April, Ethereum is set to merge its most well-known testnet. Developers will be able to test realistic deployment in Ropsten before merging the mainnet in a final step.

The proof-of-work testnet will see Ropsten combined with a proof-of-stake testnet at the Genesis event on May 30. This simulation of the real Merge will be the closest thing to a dry-run the Ethereum network can undergo. Developers were understandably excited about it:

“Ropsten testnet is getting merged on June 8!

Merging Ropsten is a huge testing milestone towards Ethereum’s mainnet merger later this year.”

Following the Ropsten merge, the Georli and Sepolia testnets could also be merged.

Ethereum developer Tim Beiko suggested a few weeks ago that the Merge would happen in the few months after June. This is in line with the current schedule and should make the Ethereum community hopeful that the Merge is on for 2022.

Ethereum also increased bounties for its bug bounty program, which offers tiered payments for serious vulnerabilities. The program combined the Eth1 and Eth2 layers, where bounty hunters can earn up to $250,000 in ETH or DAI to fix critical bugs. This far exceeds the previously set outlay of $50,000 and can even be doubled during critical periods like public testnets upgrades.