Ethereum 'Difficulty Bomb' Delayed: What You Need To Know

Core developers working on The Merge have opted to delay the deployment of the “difficulty bomb” on the Ethereum ETH/USD blockchain.

What Happened: In a series of updates on June 10, Ethereum developer Tim Beiko said on Twitter the development team had agreed to delay the bomb. 

In short, we agreed to the bomb delay. We were already over time, and want to be sure that we sanity check all the numbers before selecting an exact delay and deployment time, but we are aiming for a ~2 month delay, and for the upgrade to go live late June.

— Tim Beiko | timbeiko.eth  (@TimBeiko) June 10, 2022

For context, the difficulty bomb is a code adjustment to the Ethereum blockchain that will create a sudden increase in mining difficulty that will make it much harder and time-consuming for miners to mine ETH and earn a reward.

The difficulty bomb is meant to disincentivize Ethereum miners from producing Proof-of-Work (PoW) blocks, as the network plans to exist solely as a Proof-of-Stake (PoS) chain.

See Also: PROOF OF STAKE VS PROOF OF WORK

Once the difficulty adjustment comes into effect, it will become far less profitable to mine Ethereum.

Last year, some cryptocurrency miners like Hut 8 Mining HUTWF and HIVE Blockchain Technologies Ltd HIVE were seen making large-scale purchases of ETH mining infrastructure despite being aware of an impending transition to Proof-of-Stake that would make their efforts redundant.

With Beiko confirming that the Ethereum developers have put off deploying the difficulty bomb, Proof-of-Work ETH miners will not have to worry about decreased profitability for the next two months at least.

ETH Price Action: According to data from Benzinga Pro, ETH was trading at $1,246, down 15% over the last 24 hours