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Altair Upgrade Set to Activate on Ethereum Mainnet This Month
The upgrade represents a “low stakes warm-up” to prepare Beacon Chain developers and client teams for the coming Merge.
On Oct. 27, at epoch 74240, the Altair Beacon Chain upgrade is scheduled to activate on the Ethereum mainnet.
- According to the Ethereum blog, the upgrade represents a “low stakes warm-up” to prepare Beacon Chain developers and client teams for the coming Merge, when Ethereum will transition from a proof-of-work to proof-of-stake consensus mechanism.
- It will provide the Beacon Chain with “light client support, minor patches to incentives, per-validator inactivity leak accounting, an increase in slashing severity, and cleanups to validator rewards accounting for simplified state management.”
- Anyone operating a Beacon node or validator is required to update the client version to the new standard or risk being stuck on an incompatible chain.
- Validators who do not update won’t be able to participate in the new consensus mechanism and will also face the risk of being slashed and paying penalties.
- Because the upgrade only affects the consensus mechanism on the Beacon Chain, it will not affect end users of the current Ethereum proof-of-work blockchain.
- In order to encourage robust code review of the Altair upgrade, the bug bounty bonus has been doubled until Nov. 27.
- More information on how to update nodes and validators is available here.
Read more: What Eth 2.0 Validators Can Expect After the ‘Altair’ Upgrade
STORY CONTINUES BELOW
Edward Oosterbaan
Edward Oosterbaan was an analyst on the CoinDesk Research team focusing on Ethereum and DeFi. In 2021, Edward graduated from University of Michigan's Ross School of Business with a degree in finance and accounting. He holds ETH, AVAX, OHM and a small amount of other cryptocurrencies.
Christie Harkin
Christie Harkin is CoinDesk's managing editor of technology. Prior to joining CoinDesk, Christie was the managing editor at Bitcoin Magazine. A graduate of the University of Toronto with a specialist degree in English and Linguistics, she also completed post-degree courses in publishing at Ryerson University. Before diving into Bitcoin and blockchain tech in 2015, Christie was a children's book editor and publisher. She co-founded Clockwise Press where she edited and published the Canadian Children's Book of the Year award winning picture book, Missing Nimama. Christie holds some bitcoin and non-material amounts of other crypto tokens.
