The much-anticipated ‘Merge’ on the Ethereum network has reportedly taken an additional stride towards official introduction, following the release of the final public testnet Kiln. 

Specifically, On March 14, the Ethereum Foundation reportedly called for the network stakeholders to carry out testing with the assistance of Kiln, in an attempt to “ensure a smooth transition on existing public testnets.”

“We strongly recommend that developers run through a full testing & deployment cycle on Kiln and report any issues with tools or dependencies to those projects’ maintainers.”

Ethereum developer Tim Beiko reportedly shared a confirmation of Kiln going live, and will be available for merging with the Beacon Chain in no time, via a Twitter post on March 14th. The testnet launched late last week in proof-of-work mode only.

At the moment, Kiln is reportedly functioning a proof-of-work (PoW) testing environment for Ethereum developers, node operators, and stakers.

It is the final public testnet before the entire network turns into proof-of-stake from PoW within 2022. Kiln will fully test the merge in March. 

Beiko additionally remarked that the decision of rolling out Kiln “a week or so from launch to merge was definitely the intention”, as he revealed that Ethereum developers expressed a desire to “give the community the opportunity to test their products through the merge.”

Initially, Kiln was reportedly introduced as a PoW testnet, copying the Ethereum network’s operational environment. It operates in a parallel fashion to the Beacon Chain – the first significant PoS component of Ethereum 2.0 (going by the name the consensus layer now), offering ETH holders the ability of coin staking, and started securing the future of the Ethereum network.