Ethereum 2.0 developers are close to activating the next network upgrade, Altair, bringing the merger between Ethereum and Ethereum 2.0 even closer.
Altair, the first full update for the Ethereum 2.0 Beacon Chain, will be activated next Wednesday, October 27. This was reported by the network developers through the schedule of updates available for Ethereum. The Altair update is the first hard fork of the Beacon Chain, which will introduce considerable improvements to the network to bring the merger between Ethereum and Ethereum 2.0 even closer.
Let us remember that the Beacon Chain, activated on December 1, 2020, is the beacon chain that introduced the participation or staking on Ethereum, driving the network through its transition process to the proof-of-stake protocol, proof of stake (PoS).
This year, Ethereum developers began to make significant progress in the process of transitioning the Ethereum network to Ethereum 2.0, with the activation of Berlin in the month of April. This upgrade allowed the mainnet to prepare for future upgrades, such as London, which introduced several Ethereum improvement proposals, including EIP-1559. Now, Altair will introduce important changes and improvements to the Beacon Chain to move towards Ethereum 2.0. In late September, Ethereum 2.0 developer Danny Ryan reported that Altair is scheduled to go live at Ethereum epoch 74.240, this Wednesday at 10:56:26 am UTC.
Altair will provide support for light clients on the Beacon Chain, Ryan reported in his publicationThe main features of the new upgrade will be the introduction of synchronization committees to provide support and assistance for the creation of light clients on the network; incentive accounting reforms that will reduce the complexity of specifications and updates to penalty parameters, as indicated by EIP-2982; all this with the purpose of incentivizing the active participation of validator nodes in each of the updates and improving the transfer process, so that validators can process them more easily and safely.
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Merger of Ethereum and Ethereum 2.0
Ethereum 2.0 developer Tim Beiko also stated that Altair will allow developers to ensure that everything is working properly before implementing the Ethereum and Ethereum 2.0 merger, so that it happens without any problems. It is possible that in 2022, Ethereum 2.0 validators will be able to start withdrawing their staked ethers from the staking network, a feature that is not available at the moment.
The transition of the network of smart contracts, DApps, DeFi y NFT, from the protocol of proof of work (PoW) The Proof of Stake (PoS) protocol is something that the network's developers have been studying and developing for years. However, the high demand and use of Ethereum for the development of different protocols and projects has increased scalability problems and high costs in commission fees, motivating many users to look for more scalable and accessible alternatives in other blockchains.
Ethereum 2.0 promises to solve the scalability problems of the current network and provide a space for the creation and implementation of decentralized applications and protocols with the same level of security and reliability that Ethereum has offered until now.
Altair Update and Penalties
Altair is less than three days away from hitting the Ethereum network, so nodes that haven't yet upgraded to receive this hard fork next Wednesday should do so now. Last Tuesday, Ryan invited Validators on the Ethereum 2.0 Beacon Chain are encouraged to upgrade their nodes before Altair arrives, otherwise they will be penalized for network inactivity. To date, at least 62% of Ethereum 2.0 nodes have already upgraded to Altair.
On the other hand, validators using the Ethereum clients Nimbus, Teku, Lighthouse, and Prysm will need to run the latest versions of them, as they have all released minor versions of their clients that introduce security patches and optimizations since Altair's original announcement, Ryan reported. To encourage network security, developers have increased the number of clients that are currently being used to secure the network. rewards for detecting bugs or errors in the code.
According to the Beacon Chain launch portal, there are, to date, a total of 1,000 tokens in the Ethereum beacon chain. 249.890 validators y 8.301.858 ETH staked in staking; with an approximate value of 33.840 billion dollars. At the time of this edition, ETH is listed on the markets with a value of $4.072 per unit.
Continue reading: It's official! Ethereum 2.0 began with the generation of the Genesis block on the Beacon Chain
