Ethereum: The Merge in danger after the discovery of several critical flaws?

Nevertheless, it is unlikely that these bugs will delay the merge, as developers make quick fixes and the availability of other runtime clients.

Ethereum clients report bugs in mainnet merge updates

Clients Go Ethereum and Nethermind have found bugs in their Mainnet Merge updates. In an August 23 tweet, Ethereum developer Péter Szilágyi announced a regression bug in Geth (Promavess) version 1.10.22. This is one of the pull requests (PRs) that the team has merged to the new online storage model or pruner.

Aaand our latest release is borked. Geth 1.10.22 contains a regression that causes the trie/state to go bad. Most probably it’s one of the PRs we’ve merged towards the new storage model / online pruner. Trying to find and fix the issue.

– Péter Szilágyi (karalabe.eth) (@peter_szilagyi) August 23, 2022

“Aaand our latest version is borked. Geth 1.10.22 contains a regression that causes the sorting/status to go bad. This is most likely one of the PRs that we merged to the new inline storage / pruner model. We are trying to find and fix the problem.”

The Go Ethereum team is currently trying to find and fix the problem.

Nethermind’s lead developer, “DanielC“, responded to Péter Szilágyi’s tweet by saying that a similar regression bug was found in version v1.14.0. However, the team resolved the issue by deciding to move to a strict stabilization phase before the merge.

Recently we’ve had similar regressions in @nethermindeth so we’ve decided to switch to a strict stabilization phase before #TheMerge. We merge only fixes to the master branch currently. https://t.co/erzgN1Z0wV

– DanielC (@_D4nie1_) August 23, 2022

“Recently we had similar regressions in Nethermindeth, so we decided to go to a strict stabilization phase before merging. We are currently only merging patches on the master branch.”

These errors are unlikely to impact the Ethereum mainnet merge with the Beacon chain on the scheduled September 15 date. Users may also switch to minority execution clients. In addition, there are other runtime clients to help prepare for the Mainnet merger.

So far, several Ethereum clients have released the required Mainnet updates. These include Besu v22.7.1, Geth v1.10.22, Nethermind v1.14.0, Erigon v2022.08.02-alpha, Lighthouse v3.0.0, Teku v22.8.1 and Prysm 3.0.0.

Developers push for merger on September 15

Ethereum developers are pushing for the merge to be triggered on September 15 before the 58750000000000000000000 deadline. Plans for Bellatrix and Paris upgrades are also underway.

Ethereum customers have begun deploying Mainnet Merge releases that configure the Bellatrix, Paris and Merge upgrades.

In addition, Ethereum’s hash rate is in line with the required average hash rate of 872.2 TH/s for the merge to occur on September 15.