• Gnosis follows the footsteps of Ethereum in migrating to a Proof of Stake (PoS) protocol. 

• Gnosis is migrating from a Proof of Authority mechanism to PoS. 

• The developers are working to ensure that The Merge is successful.

Gnosis network to migrate to a PoS protocol

Privacy-focused Gnosis, one of the first sidechains to Ethereum, is set to carry out its own version of the Merge a few hours from now. 

Official Merge Announcement

The highly anticipated Gnosis Merge is upon us!

The Gnosis Chain Merge is expected around Thu Dec 08 18:47 2022 UTC.

Details below pic.twitter.com/qy1WYkvwBT

— Gnosis Chain (@gnosischain) December 6, 2022

The Merge will see Gnosis migrate from a proof-of-authority (PoA) chain to a proof-of-stake (PoS) beacon chain. According to the development team, the migration will take place Today, December 8, when a certain predetermined Total Terminal Difficulty (TTD) is reached.

Gnosis will become the major blockchain to carry out The Merge after Ethereum migrated to the PoS chain in September. Ethereum migrated from a Proof of Work mechanism, while Gnosis will ditch its Proof of Authority (PoA) mechanism for PoS. 

The PoA operates similarly to the PoS mechanism. However, instead of staking assets (as seen in PoS blockchains), PoA validators stake their reputation. This implies that the validators are required to meet certain requirements to be considered trustworthy within the community. 

Similar to the PoS, the PoA is less energy intensive compared to the Proof of Work mechanism. This is because there are fewer computational resources needed to ensure validators carry out their functions. 

The major difference between PoA and PoS is that PoA is more centralised since it selects only a few validators. The number of validators in PoS blockchains is much higher, making it more decentralised. 

Gnosis to have more than 100k validators after The Merge

The Merge will see Gnosis go from having roughly 20 validators running the blockchain to over 100,000 validators carrying out functions. Gnosis will be the blockchain with the second-highest number of validators, just behind Ethereum with over 440k validators. 

Tomorrow, exactly 1 year after the Gnosis Beacon chain launched it will merge with Gnosis Chain and replace a limited set of <20 validators with over 100,000 validators from all over the world. It will turn Gnosis into the chain with the second most validators and closest to Eth. pic.twitter.com/ywbIxhxS4E

— Martin Köppelmann (@koeppelmann) December 7, 2022

While speaking to CoinDesk, Stefan George, the co-founder and chief technology officer at Gnosis, said; 

“In the trilemma of scalability, decentralization and security, we focus on decentralization. Contrary to many ‘Ethereum killers,’ which favor scalability over decentralization, cheap blockspace is a commodity whereas decentralized blockspace is a scarce resource.”

He added that Gnosis is delighted to see Ethereum Merge was successful, and that gave them the confidence to believe they can apply the Merge successfully to Gnosis Chain. He concluded that;

“Initially, the goal was to do the Merge on Gnosis Chain before the Merge of Ethereum to show that it can be done safely on Ethereum. It turned out to be more complicated on Gnosis Chain as we were not switching from PoW but PoA and had to customize the existing code.”