Crypto Weekly: When to merge?

However, on the 13^th of April, Ethereum Foundation developer Tim Beiko wrote on Twitter that the merge will not happen in June, “but likely in the few months after”. In addition, Tim wrote that there is “No firm date yet, but we're definitely in the final chapter of PoW (proof-of-work) on Ethereum”. After the tweet by Beiko, some Ethereum core developers have stated that they are not aware of where the June target came from, while others argue that it is technically not a delay, since there was no firm launch date. While everyone anticipating the merge should have the deepest respect for Ethereum developers, it is clear that the June target relates to the Ethereum.org-website, handled by the Ethereum Foundation. For us not being deeply involved in the development of Ethereum, it is thus rightful to declare it as a delay. Ethereum.org now states that the merge is occurring in Q3 or Q4 this year. Based on the comment of Beiko, Q3 is presumably the most likely quarter of those two.

One more exploit for the books

Depending on one’s point of view in terms of crypto, 2021 is presumably the year of non-fungible tokens (NFTs), whereas 2022 is about to turn into the year of exploits of decentralized applications. The former does not need any introduction, whereas the latter might need one. In the last couple of years, the surge in popularity of decentralized applications has ultimately increased the number of applications and the value locked in each application. During the surge in popularity, the risks have increased proportionally, as there are more decentralized applications with a great amount of value locked but without a sufficient focus on security and hack mitigation. This has fundamentally made the industry a target for hackers. In 2021, there was a record-high number of exploits, but it seems that 2022 is on track to beat that. In January, Qubit Finance was exploited for $80mn, Wormhole was exploited for $326mn in February, and in late March, Ronin Network was hacked for over $600mn. On Sunday, there was one more for the books, as decentralized protocol Beanstalk Farms lost $182mn to an exploit, with the exploiter walking away with around $80mn.