Kintsugi Merge Testnet was announced by the Ethereum Foundation in December 2021. The purpose was to experiment and identify issues with the version of Ethereum that develops post The Merge.
It has been coined the first public and easily accessible testnet to run post-merge Ethereum for multiple clients. The team has hinted that Kiln will be ready before it transitions to the existing testnet.
The Update
Chair Tim Beiko recently updated the community about the status of The Merge. Kintsugi Merge Testnet was defined last month. As per the recent update announced, all the applications will begin testing deployment on Kintsugi soon.
It will, however, be replaced by Kiln.
As per the statement issued by the development team, Kiln will be ready before the applications conclude their transition. A community call has been scheduled for February 11, 2022, following which more details are expected to be revealed.
The team has identified several issues on the Ethereum network. It has initiated the repair work by making changes to Engine API specifications.
Shanghai, a long-lost project, is also gaining momentum among the developers’ team on the network. It was continuously being pushed to focus more on The Merge. Now that the transition is soon expected to be in process, the team is getting back on that project pretty soon.
Shanghai hard fork was last pushed in the previous year after executing the London hard fork.
Tim Beiko said that Shanghai was slowly being planned with more focus on the valuable Ethereum Improvement Proposal, also known as EIP.
The focus of the team is also back on beacon chain withdrawal. It has not revealed a lot about it, but More pieces of information are expected to be announced soon as it lacks a formal Ethereum Improvement Proposal.
Some smaller upgrades that are anticipated to feature on the network are BLS Precompiles, EVM Object Format, EIP-4488, EIP-3074, and EIP-1153. All these upgrades are expected to feature on the network along with Shanghai while also lowering the transacting costs.
A date for The Merge on Mainnet will be set after the team has executed the transition across all existing testnets. The transition refers to phasing out Eth1 and migrating all the users to Eth2.
Eth1 is the traditional functional concept that represents proof-of-work. An attempt is to conclude the transition of the users and applications to Eth2, which represents the functional concept of proof-of-stake.
While Eth1 will be phased out, the Ethereum Foundation maintains its stand, saying that Eth1 and Eth2 will ultimately be merged into a single chain.
Users and applications will be migrated with huge support from Shanghai hard fork as it will play a crucial role in the transition.Ethereum has optimistic support from the community, which believes that it will touch a value of $7,500 in 2022. Estimates say that four-five years later, it will go on to cross the mark of $11,500. You can get more details here about where Ethereum is headed.
