Today, the Ethereum developers activated the Bellatrix upgrade and marked the final step for the Ethereum Merge by preparing the Beacon chain.
The Ethereum Merge is a highly anticipated transformation for the crypto industry. The entire community seems to have a smooth transition with all the developments needed for the Merge. According to Vitalik Buterin, the Ethereum Merge will likely commence sometime between 13-16 September. Today, the Ethereum developers activated the Bellatrix upgrade, which is a process to prepare the Beacon chain with the main blockchain before the Merge.
Bellatrix Upgrade Marks A New Beginning
Today, the Ethereum Merge’s much-awaited Bellatrix upgrade gets activated by the Ethereum developers for the transition of Ethereum’s Proof-of-Work (PoW) chain to the Proof-of-Stake (PoS) Beacon chain. Ethereum will soon switch over to a new method of validating transactions, making an era in the cryptocurrency sphere.
The Bellatrix upgrade for the Ethereum blockchain is expected to make the Epoch value well-groomed. It would significantly spike to 144,896 on the PoS chain. It should be noted that one epoch is the interval that the network takes to mine 30,000 blocks. The Bellatrix upgrade was the hard fork upgrade that introduced “execution payload,” which is a parameter that was missing on the Beacon Chain
A Brief About Bellatrix Upgrade
The Ethereum Merge is divided into two processes. The first is the Bellatrix upgrade which was successfully triggered at a specific on-chain metric, the TTD threshold (terminal total difficulty) of 5875000000000000000000. The Merge will be successfully deployed when it hits the said value. The final upgrade is ‘Paris,’ which will trigger the Merge, and Beacon Chain (consensus layer) validators will control Proof-of-Work miners to start assigning Ethereum’s mainnet blocks.
The Bellatrix upgrade was activated for epoch 144896 and occurred at around 11:35 UTC. Before the activation of the Bellatrix upgrade, Ethereum node operators had to update their clients’ software versions to comply with the Bellatrix upgrade. It is reported that 73.5% of the Ethereum nodes are ready for the Merge. However, the co-founder of the Ethereum network, Vitalik Buterin, and Ethereum’s core developer, Tim Beiko, have been instructing other node operators to update their clients’ software versions as soon as possible before the Merge.
The Ethereum Foundation has also cautioned the node operators that failed to make the update before the Bellatrix upgrade. They said that it would lead to Ethereum clients syncing to the PoW blockchain. The Ethereum Foundation has also warned that the node operators will get stuck with an incompatible network and will not be able to transfer Ether or operate nodes after the Merge.
Final Thoughts
The Ethereum network has given a present to the community in the form of Merge. The Merge from PoW fork to PoS will reduce the high energy consumption calling it a threat to the environment. Nonetheless, the Ethereum Merge is changing things for the good with energy efficiency, making it more convenient and accessible to initiate transactions. The Ethereum Merge seems to bring technological and environmental advancement to the crypto sphere, putting confidence into the industry. However, investors are advised to be cautious while investing during the Merge as the hype can turn out to be a bubble, leading to a significant loss.
