Key Takeaways:
- Vitalik Buterin, a co-founder of Ethereum, revealed on Twitter that the Merge will be initiated between September 13 and September 15.
- Node operators were also warned that failing to upgrade their nodes prior to the Bellatrix hard fork will result in their Ethereum clients “syncing to the pre-fork blockchain.”
The network’s proof-of-stake chain, the Beacon Chain, saw the Bellatrix upgrade go live on Tuesday.
Even if the Bellatrix upgrade doesn’t reflect the complete merge and the move to proof-of-stake, it is significant since it gets the Beacon Chain ready for the merge and signifies the essential stage that starts the whole thing off.
One of the final requirements before the official Merge, which will see Ethereum switch to a proof-of-stake (PoS) consensus method between September 10 and 20, is the Bellatrix update.
The Ethereum network will have fully transitioned to the proof-of-stake system once the Paris upgrade is enabled. There are two phases to The Merge. The Bellatrix network update on the consensus layer, which was brought on by an epoch height, is the first event.
The Ethereum mainnet will switch to proof of stake upon the achievement of a final terminal total difficulty (TTD) value under the Paris upgrade. The network’s overall mining difficulty is represented by TTD.
The merge will be initiated when the TTD value of 58750000000000000000000 is reached, which is anticipated to occur between September 10 and 20.
Each Ethereum node runs on two layers: the consensus layer (also known as the “C layer”) and the proof-of-work (PoS) layer, which is the current primary network and connects via an API. The Ethereum network will switch to a PoS architecture when the two levels come together.
According to the Ethereum Foundation, Ethereum node operators must update their consensus layer clients before epoch 144896 on the Beacon Chain, which is planned to occur at 11:34:47 am UTC on September 6, 2022, in order to be Merge ready.
However, Vitalik Buterin and core dev Tim Beiko took to Twitter to encourage remaining node operators to upgrade their clients since 26.5% of nodes were flagged as “Not-Ready” for the Ethereum Merge.
Before Bellatrix, it was crucial that all Ethereum clients be appropriately refreshed, as Vitalik Buterin, the founder of Ethereum, and developers frequently highlighted.
If not, the clients, nodes, and their Ethereum software wouldn’t be able to function on the Ethereum network after the merger.
However, the majority seems to have updated promptly, with just 10% appearing to have not.
The majority of “Not-Ready” nodes, as per Ethernodes, are on the Geth client and have not yet been updated to Geth v1.10.23 or higher.
Erigon, Besu, and Nethermind are more Ethereum clients with node operators that need to be updated.
Holders of ETH don’t need to do anything with their money or wallet because, following the Merge, the genesis will remain untouched. Access to funds will be simple for holders.
The Ethereum Foundation cautioned users to be on the lookout for fraudsters that might attempt to take advantage of holders during the upgrade, though.
It advised users not to give their ETH to anyone in an effort to upgrade to ETH2, and that there are no such things as ETH tokens.
