tl;dr
Kintsugi🍵 in progress
At the beginning of November, the month-long Merge Kintsugi🍵 sprint began! Kintsugi specifications And milestones/plans have been released, and customer teams are now engaged in the sprint with the goal of launching a persistent testnet during the first week of December.
The Kintsugi specifications incorporate all the learnings and minor adjustments from the Amphore interoperability. The November Kintsugi Sprint is therefore an effort to (1) incorporate the new changeset and (2) refine and produce the merge implementations. Kintsugi will culminate with the launch of a persistent multi-client testnet that will run through the December holidays and serve as the basis for merger plans made in January.
Customer teams are currently working on milestones: feature development, test execution, and initial interoperability experiments with other customers. Additionally, a Devnet Merge is launching every week this month: merge-devnet-0 is the last.
If you want to test Merge software, keep your eyes peeled for client builds and testnet instructions. We hope that many community members will engage with the Kintsugi testnet after it launches in the first week of December.
After the launch of this testnet, the EIPs and relevant specifications will be transferred to a last call status in which teams and individuals take one last look at the changeset before it is released. frozen. After that, the public proof-of-work and clique testnets will undergo the merge transition in the new year as our teams finalize testing and prepare for mainnet launch.
Upgrading to Arrow Glacier
Although Finalized mainly deals with the consensus layer of Ethereum, The upcoming (minor) upgrade to the current proof-of-work chain is essential for users running validators. Around December 8, 2021, Arrow Glacier will defuse the difficult bomb, pushing it back several months. See the Arrow Glacier Announcement for details on the upgrade and associated client releases.
If you run validators, please upgrade your “eth1 endpoint” (PoW node) before Wednesday, December 5, 2021 to account for varying block times. This should be the last difficulty bomb before the merge 🚀
