Ethereum 2.0 is becoming a reality with the Merge on Ropsten scheduled for June 8th. Amid the buzz, the experts share their thoughts about the upcoming upgrade coming to the network.

Say hello to the Merge

Tim Beiko, Ethereum’s lead developer announced the Ropsten merge, the moving of “Ethereum’s longest lived PoW” to Proof-of-Stake. Beiko revealed that with this latest development, The Merge is scheduled to occur on June 8th, sparking a wave of excitement amongst community members.

The Merge is the second of three phases and will combine the beacon chain with the current Ethereum mainnet. The beacon chain introduced staking to the blockchain and is a key component of the network’s push to Proof-of-Stake. The Merge lays the foundation for Shard Chains, an answer to the Ethereum network’s quest for scalability as operations will be spread across 64 different chains.

“Right now, the key thing to watch for Ethereum is the Merge as it changes from Proof-of-Work to Proof-of-Stake,” Ian Ballina, CEO of Token Metrics. “This is a fundamental catalyst event that will make Ethereum potentially deflationary and this could change the entire climate of crypto assets.”

Kraken’s CEO Jesse Powell has stated that he is not fazed by the slow space of the ‘Merge’ development because of the belief that “success is more important than speed.” Experts are particularly interested in the amount of energy that will be saved in a transition to PoS especially as PoW systems like Bitcoin have caught a lot of flak for their impact on the environment.