Share this article

Ethereum's Sepolia Testnet Successfully Switches to Proof-of-Stake

The Sepolia proof-of-work chain merged with its proof-of-stake chain on Wednesday, taking Ethereum one step closer to its own Merge moment.

Updated Apr 9, 2024, 11:11 p.m. Published Jul 6, 2022, 5:24 p.m.
(KevinAlexanderGeorge/ iStock/Getty Images Plus)
(KevinAlexanderGeorge/ iStock/Getty Images Plus)

The penultimate test environment network (testnet) merge before the Ethereum blockchain makes its long-awaited move to proof-of-stake from proof-of-work has successfully been completed.

  • Sepolia was the second of three public testnets to run through the Merge. After this, Goerli is expected to merge.
  • The network went to proof-of-stake (PoS) when the Terminal Total Difficulty (TTD) exceeded 17,000,000,000,000,000. That occurred around 17:00 UTC.
  • In the hours since the testnet merge happened, no significant glitches have been reported.
  • The Sepolia merge was a two-step process. Ethereum announced that first the operators needed to update their consensus layer and execution layer clients together. That then activated two phases: the first at an epoch height on the Beacon Chain and the second upon hitting the total difficulty value on the execution layer.
  • The testnet merge takes the project one step closer to Ethereum's mainnet upgrade later this year. The first testnet merge, Ropsten, was completed on June 8.

Read more: Merge Testing on Ethereum: What Is It and Why Does It Matter?

STORY CONTINUES BELOW
Don't miss another story.Subscribe to the The Protocol Newsletter today. See all newsletters

More For You

Protocol Research: GoPlus Security

GP Basic Image

What to know:

  • As of October 2025, GoPlus has generated $4.7M in total revenue across its product lines. The GoPlus App is the primary revenue driver, contributing $2.5M (approx. 53%), followed by the SafeToken Protocol at $1.7M.
  • GoPlus Intelligence's Token Security API averaged 717 million monthly calls year-to-date in 2025 , with a peak of nearly 1 billion calls in February 2025. Total blockchain-level requests, including transaction simulations, averaged an additional 350 million per month.
  • Since its January 2025 launch , the $GPS token has registered over $5B in total spot volume and $10B in derivatives volume in 2025. Monthly spot volume peaked in March 2025 at over $1.1B , while derivatives volume peaked the same month at over $4B.

More For You

ZKsync Lite to Shut Down in 2026 as Matter Labs Moves On

Sunset in San Salvador. Credit: Ricky Mejia, Unsplash

The company framed the move, happening in early 2026, as a planned sunset.

What to know:

  • Matter Labs plans to deprecate ZKsync Lite, the first iteration of its Ethereum layer-2 network, the team said in a post on X over the weekend.
  • The company framed the move, happening in early 2026, as a planned sunset for an early proof-of-concept that helped validate their zero-knowledge rollup design choices before newer systems went live.