Ethereum Beacon Chain Community Director Superphiz Shares a ‘Planning Timeline’ That Specifies a Date for The Merge
Ethereum (ETH) supporters and the crypto community, in general, have been waiting a long time for developers to finalize the transition from a PoW to a PoS consensus model. Amid the wait, there have been some changes to the network that allow for a smoother transition. For instance, part of The Merge process started with the implementation of the network’s Beacon chain, an Ethereum PoS chain that runs parallel with the Ethereum PoW chain.
The Beacon chain was shipped on the first day of December 2020. Statistics from the ETH 2.0 contract indicate that there’s roughly 13.1 million ETH locked today. In order to stake ether using the PoS system, a deposit of 32 ETH is required to start the staking process and, at the time of writing, there are 395,762 validators.
When The Merge is officially implemented, PoW miners using the Ethash algorithm will be forced to mine a different blockchain like Ethereum Classic (ETC). Despite this upcoming change, ether miners have continued to dedicate hashrate toward the ETH network and on June 4, at block height 14,902,285, the hashrate tapped an all-time high. On that day, the hashrate reached 1,320 terahash per second (TH/s) or 1.32 petahash per second (PH/s).
Today, the global Ethereum hashrate is lower, coasting along at 968.75 TH/s according to coinwarz.com metrics. Roughly around the same time 13 million ETH was deposited into the ETH 2.0 contract, Ethereum developers decided to delay the network’s difficulty bomb via the Gray Glacier update.
Full Details:
https://news.bitcoin.com/while-the-timeline-isnt-final-ethereum-could-implement-merge-on-september-19/ 
