Ethereum Foundation Confirms Date of First-Ever Ethereum 2.0 Upgrade Named Altair

Danny Ryan, the coordinator of Ethereum 2.0 at the Ethereum Foundation, has announced the date of the first-ever Ethereum 2.0 upgrade known as Altair.

In an announcement on 5th October 2021, Danny Ryan invited all node operators of Ethereum 2.0 to upgrade their software to avoid the validator downtime penalty.

In a blog post captioned in the tweet, Ryan stated that the Altair beacon chain (ETH2 initial phase) upgrade will be launched in mainnet at epoch 74240, which is expected to come on 27th October 2021 at 10:56 A.M. UTC.

Danny Ryan tweeted, “Altair Mainnet launch at epoch 74240 (Oct 27, 2021, 10:56:23am UTC)! Upgrade your nodes! Now, onward to the Merge.”

In order to keep their nodes synchronized with post-Altair consensus, node operators need to upgrade their clients. Links to versions of software for all clients, including Lighthouse, Lodestar, Nimbus, Prysm, and Teku, are made available in the announcement.

As with Ethereum 1.0 hard forks, end-users, ETH holders, contracts, and the state of the proof-of-work (PoW) network, are not affected by the updates.

Altair, the first Ethereum 2.0 upgrade is specifically designed to advance the economic logic of the network and to bring light client support for its core consensus.

The Merge Knocks

After the Altair upgrade, Ethereum 1.0 difficulty bomb removal will follow in December. After this, the full upgrade to proof of stake (PoS) known as The Merge will follow. This is probably happening next year with testnets coming first.

The Merge is one of the most important aspects of the upgrade, in which miners will be completely removed to give way for validators. Due to this development, Ethereum will no longer inflate in supply by 4% a year, making the crypto asset become scarcer.

Thus, Altair is a vital upgrade in preparation for the much-awaited chains merging popularly known as The Merge.

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Solomon Odunayo

Solomon is a trader, crypto enthusiast, and analyst with over four years of experience in the industry. He strongly believes that crypto assets and the blockchain will continue to gain prominence. At TimesTabloid.com, he focuses on news, articles with deep analysis of blockchain projects, and technical analysis of crypto trading pairs.