Ethereum will shortly be transitioning from a Proof of Work to a Proof of Stake consensus mechanism - AKA The Merge. On Thursday September 15, Ethereum will undergo its highly anticipated transition from Proof-of-Work to Proof-of-Stake. Known as the Merge, the switch will cause a hard fork in the Ethereum chain and may result in temporary outages for both ETH and ERC-20 tokens.
Following years of hard work, Ethereum's proof-of-stake upgrade is finally here! The successful upgrade of all public testnets is now complete, and The Merge has been scheduled for the Ethereum mainnet. The Merge is different from previous network upgrades in two ways. First, node operators need to update both their consensus layer (CL) and execution layer (EL) clients in tandem, rather than just one of the two. Second, the upgrade activates in two phases: the first, named Bellatrix, at an epoch height on the Beacon Chain, and the second, named Paris, upon hitting a Total Difficulty value on the execution layer.
-Ethereum is moving to proof-of-stake! The transition, known as The Merge, must first be activated on the Beacon Chain with the Bellatrix upgrade. After this, the proof-of-work chain will migrate to proof-of-stake upon hitting a specific Total Difficulty value.
-The Bellatrix upgrade is scheduled for epoch 144896 on the Beacon Chain -- 11:34:47am UTC on Sept 6, 2022.
-The Terminal Total Difficulty value triggering The Merge is 58750000000000000000000, expected between Sept 10-20, 2022.
Note: as announced earlier, the Kiln testnet is being sunset. Operators will shut down on September 6, 2022.
https://blog.ethereum.org/2022/08/24/mainnet-merge-announcement