Ethereum developers report that The Merger will occur in August "if all goes according to plan."

Preston Van Loon, core developer of the Ethereum network, told attendees at the Permissionless conference that the transition, known as The Merge, will occur sometime in August if everything goes according to plan.

And now with the rapid growth of web3 that now has protocols like OceanProtocol, or protocols for development like Tea, it is more than necessary for The Merge to happen, for the growth of the technology.

Fellow Ethereum researcher Justin Drake stated that ensuring The Fusion went ahead quickly was a top priority, and shared his "strong desire for this to happen before the difficulty bomb in August."

The "hardship bomb" refers to the program coded into Ethereum's blockchain that intentionally slows down the network. It was designed to encourage the transition to PoS by making it harder for miners to stay on the proof-of-work (PoW) chain after The Merge.

If the merger goes through successfully in August, the final milestone on the Ethereum roadmap, formerly known as Eth2, is the upgrade of the fragmented chains, which is scheduled for early 2023.

Until then, however, the network will continue to use Layer 2 networks such as Polygon and Optimism to handle scalability and high transaction volumes.