Ethereum's long-awaited proof-of-stake Merge upgrade “won't be June, but likely in the few months after”, according to a lead developer on the project
Jialiang David Pan / Bloomberg :
Context & Ripple Effects
In April 2022, a lead developer on Ethereum pushed the proof-of-stake Merge past June, saying it was more likely "in the few months after" — the latest slip for an upgrade in development since 2020. The delay landed at a weak moment for the network: ether was down roughly 18-21% over the week amid the broader crypto selloff, daily ether burned in transaction fees had hit an all-time low around March 22 alongside dips in active addresses, and reporting suggested Ethereum was losing the interest of investors and developers relative to its peers.
The timeline held roughly as the developer predicted: by August, Ethereum's core developers set September 15 as the tentative date, and on that day the Merge went live, moving transactions to proof of stake. Overviews published before activation flagged an expected ~99% cut in the network's energy use, alongside the execution risks of swapping the consensus engine of the largest smart-contract platform.
First-order effects
- The delay extended proof-of-work mining on Ethereum past June, keeping miners' revenue window open for another quarter while ETH holders waited through a week in which ether fell 18-21%.
- Ethereum's developers gained additional testing time, but the slippage added to a stretch of weak network metrics — record-low ether burn and declining active addresses — that had already fed the narrative of fading investor and developer interest.
Second-order effects
- Once the September date was locked and the upgrade activated, Ethereum's energy footprint was positioned to drop by ~99%, removing the network's most-cited environmental critique and changing the terms on which it competes for institutional attention.
- Rival platforms that had leaned on Ethereum's proof-of-work energy use as a differentiator lost that argument the moment transactions moved to proof of stake on September 15.
Third-order effects
- The episode shows how the largest smart-contract platform now changes its core protocol on a multi-year, milestone-driven cadence — dates slip publicly, but the direction (proof of stake, lower energy use) survives the delays.
- If the pattern holds, Ethereum's roadmap becomes a coordination point for the whole ecosystem: developers, miners, and DeFi builders plan around upgrade dates the way they once planned around block rewards.
The trend: Ethereum's multi-year migration from proof of work to proof of stake shows core-protocol upgrades on major blockchains slipping past target dates but still landing, with the September 15 activation as the proof point.