Ethereum devs Tim Beiko and James Hancock have posted proposal 4345 which aims to delay the difficulty time bomb until later next year, in May 2022.
The difficulty time bomb is a process that makes Ethereum mining harder so that at some point mining will no longer be profitable. This is part of the transition from PoW to PoS.
With the London upgrade, the difficulty time bomb was already delayed to December of this year. Difficulty time bombs have been detonated in 2017 and in 2019.
The decision to postpone the detonation again means that Ethereum devs aren’t quite ready to let go of miners for now.
The two propose that the bomb could be detonated somewhere in Q2 2022 or even completely removed.
“Targeting for the Shanghai upgrade and/or the Merge to occur before May 2022. Either the bomb can be readjusted at that time, or removed altogether.”
People acting in their own interest? Shocking!