According to the announcement from the Ethereum Foundation, The Merge will happen in two steps. The first step, the upgrade of the consensus layer Bellatrix, is scheduled for epoch 144,896 on the Beacon Chain at 11:34 on September 6, 2022 (UTC). The second is the upgrade of the execution layer Paris, which will be triggered when the PoW chain hits the terminal total difficulty (TTD) of 58750000000000000000000, expected on September 15, 2022 (UTC).

To reduce market risks, Poloniex will take extra precautions for the trading of USDT-margined ETH perpetual futures contracts during the Ethereum Merge. Details are as follows:

• ETH perpetual contracts will be available for trading as usual;
• The maximum leverage of ETH perpetual contracts will be adjusted to 20x;
  • Only new orders placed after the time of adjustment are subject to the specified leverage limit; ETH futures positions opened and orders posted before the adjustment will not be affected;
  • Time of adjustment: September 6, 2022 at 10:00 (UTC);
  • After The Merge, the change may be revoked in due course when the Ethereum network becomes stable.
• In case of a successful hard fork and a new ETH fork token coming out, the spot price index of the USDT-margined ETH futures will be calculated based on the spot indexes of the ETH/USDT spot markets on Poloniex and other major trading platforms. 

For more information, please see:

• Ethereum’s Merge
• Mainnet Merge Announcement
• Poloniex Will Pause ETH and ERC-20 Token Deposits and Withdrawals During the Merge

Poloniex Team

September 1, 2022