The Ethereum upgrade delay is driving investors more anxious by the day amid volatile price fluctuations

Ethereum is one of the most significant altcoins in the market and one of Bitcoin's biggest competitors. For the past few months, since the fall of the BTC price, the crypto investor community has been rooting for Ethereum to take over Bitcoin as the world's most prominent cryptocurrency. Even though both Ethereum and Bitcoin's prices have sunk by over 20% within a period of just seven days, with BTC falling under US$30,000, and the Ether price diving below US$1,800, investors have been consistently wishing that Ether would finally bring respite to the crypto market. But with the Ethereum upgrade being constantly delayed, crypto users are now getting impatient and some are even ready to leave the market! The Ethereum creator, Vitalik Buterin, has constantly delayed the Ethereum transition to proof-of-stake (PoS). The upgrade was postponed to June of this year, but then in a recently announcement the Ether team announced that its 'difficulty bomb' will be facing further delay, making investors even more skeptical and anxious.

The delay on the 'difficulty bomb' brings more bad news for Ethereum investors who were wishing for the completion of the Ethereum Merge upgrade in August. The upgrade was first started by ConsenSys researcher Mikhail Kalinin, but as days passed by, the Ethereum upgrade work has been undertaken by several developers from the broader community. The Merge aims to migrate Ethereum from its energy-intensive proof-of-work algorithm to the proof-of-stake algorithm. Buterin has signified that the upgrade will most probably be launched by August, in case there are no significant issues.

What does the Merge upgrade intend to serve?

Ethereum developers have demonstrated that the 'shadow fork', meaning the transfer to PoS has been under successful development. The Merge intends to make Ethereum one of the most sustainable cryptocurrencies in the market. ETH Merge is the first of Ethereum's major upgrades, which comes after the London upgrade. After the Merge, the developers have lined up a series of other upgrades aimed to make the ETH network much more robust, namely The Surge, The Verge, The Purge, and finally The Splurge. Various tests have been going on for several months as developers test the Beacon Chain, but reports say that there aren't enough updates and reformations in place to make the official merge upgrade.

The 'difficulty bomb' is a piece of code that when activated gradually boots miners off the blockchain through increasing mining difficulty, until it becomes absolutely impossible to mine Ethereum. ETH developers have already put the difficulty bomb in place which was already delayed previously. Even though it is quite understandable that transforming the second-largest cryptocurrency in the market might be a complex and critical task, this delay is causing Ethereum to lose the opportunities that might enable the crypto to overtake BTC.

Delays in the Difficulty Bomb

Last week Friday, several issues emerged which drove ETH developers to roll back the Ethereum upgrade's release further later. The developers found bugs on the Ropsten testnet, one of the oldest testnets for ETH. Around 14 network validators, including those that oversee the security of the network had to be taken offline when the new code was deployed. Since then, the developers have deployed extra cautiousness until all the issues are resolved until the final launch.

The Ethereum upgrade will surely be deployed this year, but the delay is harming the network more than the developers, or even Buterin could actually anticipate. Investors growing more anxious by the day as they have started to believe that the Ethereum upgrade might not even come due to technical glitches and it is just a piece of consolation to overshadow the falling prices of Ether. The upgrade has become a double-edged sword for Ethereum, only time will tell how investors will react to further delays to this much-awaited Ether development.