OpenEthereum – a popular ETH client – halted its service for the software. This is to get ready for the anticipated Ethereum Merge. With the Merge approaching and the ancient legacy codebase becoming more difficult to maintain, the team said it was time to retire OpenEthereum support.
OpenEthereum is not Entirely Closed Down Though
OpenEthereum was founded in January 2019 by the Open Ethereum Foundation, a non-profit organization backed by Pantera Capital and Andreessen Horowitz. Parity Technologies, a blockchain infrastructure firm, acquired OpenEthereum before ceding control to the OpenEthereum DAO last December.
According to Etherscan, the Parity wallet was compromised, and an attacker exploited a previous vulnerability in the code to steal funds.
The initiative aims to create “clients,” or software that interfaces with the Ethereum network and allows anybody to set up an Ethereum node and generate bitcoin, which is presently processed using a proof-of-work (PoW) consensus mechanism. The team at OpenEthereum claimed that “well-documented” clients would need to “navigate the upcoming Merge and successful transition to proof-of-stake (PoS),” recommending people to move to other platforms like Erigon or Nethermind.
In Preparation for Ethereum 2.0
The developers call it The Merge for the Ethereum blockchain upgrade. It will incorporate the existing proof-of-stake Beacon Chain with the current proof-of-work main net, which validates transactions on the network. The Merge has been in the works since 2016, with numerous delays.
It was initially scheduled to come online in 2019. The Merge had been expected to occur in mid-2022, but there have been problems since April. The launch of the Ethereum 2.0 upgrade has been delayed until August 2022, according to an Ethereum developer named Preston Van Loon. It is due to be introduced on the subsequent Repsten testnet integration in August 2022 “if everything goes as planned,” he added.
