The Sepolia testnet has officially completed its transition to the Proof-of-Stake (PoS) algorithm while merging with Beacon Chain.
The penultimate step in Ethereum’s transition to PoS (the merge of Beacon Chain and the Sepolia testnet) is officially finished. The event was streamed on YouTube and was “successful.”
The testnet will be monitored over the next few days. Ethereum Protocol Developer Terence Tsao confirmed that the testnet’s merge with Beacon Chain was successful. At the time of Sepolia’s transition to PoS, about 25-30% of validators were down due to “configuration issues,” but all nodes were back up and running quickly.
The exact date of Ethereum’s full transition to PoS is still unknown, but the developers remain optimistic. Earlier, the team successfully merged the Ropsten testnet with Beacon Chain. Over the next few weeks, the last step before Ethereum moves to version 2.0 will be taken — the Goerli network will merge with Beacon Chain.
During the event’s broadcast, Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin noted that the successful merge of all the testnets gives hope for a seamless transition of the core network to Proof-of-Stake, but the process may be fraught with some difficulties. The key difficulty, according to Buterin, could be the fact that the mainnet has a lot more “third-party infrastructure that’s currently not available during the testnets.”
Recall that Ethereum CEO Tim Beiko recently reminded developers what changes will be made to smart contracts after the core network moves to PoS.
