Google doodle countdown for Ethereum Merge

Only a few hours left for the much-awaited Ethereum Merge to occur. The hype surrounding Ethereum’s new merge update is creating it a much-anticipated event in the community. Banking on that, Google has added a new countdown timer as a sign of recognition. All one needs is to search ‘Ethereum merge’ and it will open a countdown timer.

Sam Padilla, on Friday took it to twitter and announced that an Ethereum Merge countdown clock is live in the Google Search Engine. The tweet says, ‘Everyone is so excited for what is coming and appreciative of the work that has been going into this for years.’

In response Péter Szilágyi tweeted that, ‘You know you've made it in life when Google adds an Easter-egg for you :) Congrats #Ethereum community, you've achieved something few could.’

Ethereum is expecting the long awaited network upgrade -updating its software ‘The Merge’ which will shift its consensus mechanism to proof-of-stake (PoS) from existing proof-of-work (PoW). This would also mean that Ethereum Mainnet (formerly known as Eth1) will combine with the Beacon Chain proof-of-stake system. According to the Ethereum Foundation, the overall transition in mechanism will set the stage for future scaling upgrade and reduce Ethereum's energy consumption by almost 99.95 percent. Follow the video of The Great Renaming to learn terms of the new Ethereum ecosystem.

Meanwhile, the doodle art by Google is represented by two bears running towards each other to ‘merge’. The black bear represents the execution layer whereas the consensus layer appears as white bear. The two will come closer as time passes by. The merging of the two illustrated bears into a single fighting panda will symbolise ‘The Merge’ in classic google fashion. There is a ticking clock that shows the countdown along with hashrate, merge difficulty and current difficulty. The data is pulled in real- time directly from the Ethereum blockchain using some of the nodes Google runs.

                              *Credits: Google*

Padilla said that the idea to put a countdown ticker came out randomly in the company’s Web3 community chats. A group of employees at Google wanted to create an easter egg for Ethereum’s long awaited transition from PoW to PoS.

It is to be noted that the panda is a well- known staple of Ethereum merge meme culture.In May this year, Ethereum R&D member Hsiao- Wei Wang shared the news of the upcoming Merge through twitter along with a poster of ‘bears’. According to it, the merge will happen when the two bears combine to create a fighting panda. Google seems to have adopted the same idea.

This validation by the world’s most popular site, Google indicates the ever- growing interest in The Merge is exploding worldwide. The Merge has attracted several headlines and debates across communities. But no one can look past the energy efficient mechanism after the upgrade. Google trends shows that five countries namely Luxemburg, St. Helena, Singapore, North Macedonia and Lithuania have their eyes stuck on the transition.

Although Google has come up with its own mechanism to countdown the date of ‘D- event’, there are several other websites and tools that claim to offer a precise calculation of the time of the merger. The Ethereum merge event will oc cur once the Terminal Total difficulty (TTD) of 58, 750, 000,000T is reached.

According to Blocknative, there is no specific date and time at exactly when the merger will take place. Although it can be calculated based on the current and past network hash rates. At the same time the hash rate is not constant and depends upon the number of active miners on the Ethereum network. Hash rate will change in case the miners join or leave the network. As a result this could change the timestamp.

Another site, Watcher.Guru is also keeping an eye on the merger and estimates it to occur on 15th September 4:49 am UCT (or 10:19 am IST). The page claims to provide accurate mathematical prediction based on the average difficulty and time between blocks over x amount of blocks. It provides graphical representation also.

Apart from these wenmerge.com provides real-time countdown.Forta Explorer too is a useful tool. It is a one Merge Bot that tracks milestones in TTD (Total Terminal Difficulty), which is the pre-determined threshold at which the transition from PoW to PoS will occur.

It is to be noted that none of these can be trusted wholly or completely as these are just tools for prediction.

Some points to be noted

During the Merge, Ethereum’s existing beacon chain called the consensus layer would combine with Ethereum’s PoW mainnet which is the execution layer. The Merge is unlikely to slash Ethereum transaction fees but it will marginally improve the block time of the network. After TheMerge, the block time will be of 12 sec. The Merge will help the network to upgrade its infrastructural capacity and developers expect to have less carbon footprint which is the biggest drawback of a Proof of Work blockchain network

Cover Image designed by Vishal T