Ethereum developers, of which the most notable is Vitalik Buterin, have been talking about the Ethereum Merge for years literally. But alas, avid fans like us have been craning our necks since forever but have only been met with disappointment as this highly anticipated merge kept getting delayed. 

Vitalik Buterin must have realised the importance of not raising false hopes as he didn’t declare in definitive terms that the Merge would happen this August. In fact, even though various shadow forks proceeded without a hitch, he was careful to give himself some leeway by saying that the Merge could be postponed to this September or October.

All these instances of past disappointments and cautious hopium made me not want to place any hopes on the Ropsten testnet merge that was scheduled to happen on June 8 (which was yesterday!) After all, the shift from Proof of Work to Proof of Stake was a massive undertaking, one that could expose various bugs and other deficiencies when the Ropsten testnet - the one most similar to the Mainnet - was put to the test. Many things could go wrong.

Except that nothing went wrong! 

Fortune reported that the Ropsten testnet made the transition to the Proof of Stake successfully! Whoa! Ethereum miners must be disappointed right now, for this implies that ETH mining would only decline in importance (and maybe phased out) in time to come. But for those of us who are eager to have danksharding take place via L2 solutions, this success is a small step in the right direction. Maybe the Merge would happen as forecasted in August and thus, bring about a revolution in its gas fees?

Are you feeling positive or negative about the Merge?