Ethereum will transition from Proof of Work (PoW) towards Proof of Stake (PoS) in a process known as the Merge. It is currently likely that it will happen on or around September 15, 2022.
Will I need to do anything?
As a Safe user there is nothing you need to do with regards to the Merge. Your Safe will be functioning as before. The contract will not change and neither will the interfaces. With the Merge, merely the consensus layer of Ethereum is replaced which should not affect users.
Will there be downtimes?
There have been various testnets and “test-merges”. The Safe core team has been preparing for this event for a long time, however there is a likelihood that the interfaces or backend system won’t be available for some time. As always, we will share any updates and interruptions on our Twitter and Discord.
We do recommend however to not schedule any very important transaction for exactly the time of the Merge or immediately after. Better to either do it before, or be prepared to wait for some time in case of issues.
What about forks?
There seems to be a community that would like to continue running the PoW Ethereum chain, hence after the Merge it is likely that there will be 2 Ethereum chains: PoW and PoS. The state of both will be exactly the same at the time of the Merge. Your Safe will exist on both chains.
The Safe project will only support the PoS chain, i.e. you will not be able to interact with the PoW chain via one of the official interfaces.
In case you decide to interact with the PoW chain, please ensure you know what you are doing since there might be security considerations that can affect your assets on the PoS chain.