Ethereum Merge a 'few months after' June: Dev clears up what’s going on

cointelegraph.com:

The long-awaited Ethereum Merge is set for yet another delay, with developers working on the upgrade estimating a completion time a “few months after” June.

Owing to the success of testing, there was a general expectation the Merge would go through mid year, however the latest setback is unsurprising given that Proof of Stake has been delayed constantly ever since it was first proposed.

That said, the signs are promising that the Ethereum mainnet will actually merge with the beacon chain to become a Proof-of-Stake (PoS) network this year. For real.

Ethereum developer Tim Beiko provided the updated timeline via Twitter yesterday, tentatively stating that the core devs are into the final stretch:

After noting that his comments caused a stir amongst Ethereum proponents and haters alike, Beiko followed up today by observing “that it can be hard to parse the progress on The Merge when you aren't deep in the process.”

To provide further context, Beiko published a blog post with a deeper rundown.

Didn't expect my tweets from yesterday to cause such a reaction I appreciate that it can be hard to parse the progress on The Merge when you aren't deep in the process. Tried to provide some context here: https://t.co/QTZ7CuapMf pic.twitter.com/MVXdPEj3NX

According to the developer, a specific date will not be set until “client teams are confident that the software implementations have been thoroughly tested and are bug-free.”

Central to these latter stages are the trial runs of public test nets such as Kiln, and the roll out of shadow forks which enable devs to test various merge/PoS-related implementations on the network.

Another important factor is the difficulty bomb (an automated increase in mining difficulty designed to make PoW