Ethereum’s ‘Difficulty Bomb’ Timing Hints at an Early Summer Merge

Ethereum’s ‘Difficulty Bomb’ Timing Hints at an Early Summer Merge
This article originally appeared in Valid Points, CoinDesk’s weekly newsletter breaking down Ethereum 2.0 and its sweeping impact on crypto markets. Subscribe to Valid Points here.During Ethereum Core Devs Meeting #124 on Oct. 15, a proposal to push December’s “difficulty bomb” was discussed. According to ETH Hub, the “Difficulty Bomb refers to a mechanism that, at a predefined block number, increases the difficulty level of puzzles in the proof-of-work mining algorithm resulting in longer than normal block times (and thus less ETH rewards for miners).”In other words, it increases mining difficulty exponentially over time, eventually leading to an “Ice Age,”…