On December 21st, Ethereum core developer Tim Beiko announced on Twitter. Ethereum will launch the first public testnet, Kintsugi Merge Testnet, for a full upgrade to Proof of Stake (PoS).
Tim Beiko also said that although client development and UX will continue to improve, users are encouraged to start using Kintsugi as early as possible to familiarize themselves with the Ethereum network in the combined environment. The major upgrade will be performed by the staking who deposited 32 ETH. Currently, 2.3 million testnet ETHs have been deposited into the new network by a relative 72,000 verifiers. This shows that the community is fully prepared for “the biggest upgrade in the encryption field.” In addition, according to the report, application developers will not change much, and tools that only interact with the consensus layer or the execution layer are basically not affected.