Merge expected around September 13 to 15.

In a tweet today, Ethereum founder Vitalik Buterin while highlighting that the Bellatrix upgrade kicks off today, let slip that the Merge is expected to happen from around September 13 to 15, urging node operators to upgrade their clients.

“The merge is still expected to happen around Sep 13-15. What’s happening today is the Bellatrix hard fork, which *prepares* the chain for the merge. Still important, though – make sure to update your clients!” Buterin wrote in the tweet.

The merge is still expected to happen around Sep 13-15. What's happening today is the Bellatrix hard fork, which *prepares* the chain for the merge. Still important though – make sure to update your clients!

— vitalik.eth (@VitalikButerin) September 6, 2022

It is worth mentioning that the Bellatrix upgrade represents the first phase of the Ethereum Merge. The Bellatrix upgrade prepares the Ethereum proof-of-stake (PoS) Beacon chain for The Merge with the Ethereum execution layer. 

The next phase, as previously reported by The Crypto Basic, is the Paris Upgrade which will trigger the Ethereum Merge once a Terminal Total Difficulty (TTD) of 58750000000000000000000 has been reached. As per Buterin’s comments today, we expect this to happen sometime between September 13 and 15.

The Merge is an Ethereum upgrade years in the making that will see the programmable blockchain move from the energy-intensive proof-of-work (PoW) consensus model for transaction validation to PoS. Notably, the move will reduce Ethereum’s carbon footprint by 99.95%.

However, it bears mentioning that, as clarified by Ethereum developers, the upgrade will not lead to reduced gas fees or faster transactions as things like sharding that will help with these are expected in future upgrades. In the meantime, Ethereum urges users with the desire for better scalability and cheaper fees to use the Layer 2 solutions built on it, which include Polygon, Arbitrum, and Optimism.

As The Merge approaches, Ethereum price speculation has spiked, with the crypto community divided on which direction the asset price will take post-Merge. The Crypto Basic recently reported that over 94k ETH was added to the ETH 2.0 staking contract on September 1 alone.

Ethereum is currently trading at the $1,643.22 price point, up 4.25% today and 4.08% in the last seven days. It is leading the gains among the top 10 crypto assets by market cap.