The Ethereum 2.0 Altair upgrade is going smoothly, 98.7% of the nodes are now upgraded

The Ethereum 2.0 Altair Beacon Chain update has started successfully, 98.7% of the nodes have already been updated.

On October 27th, Ethereum 2.0 developer Preston Vanloon tweeted that The Altair upgrade was “successfully activated”.

Altair is the first upgrade to the Beacon Chain since it went online in December 2020, and possibly the last before it merges with the Ethereum mainnet and switches to proof of stake.

The upgrade provides slight client support for the core consensus, cleans up the billing of signaling status incentives, fixes some issues with validation incentives and updates penalty parameters (penalty for offline validators) according to EIP-2982.

Paul Hauner is the lead developer and Altair code reviewer at Lighthouse, an Ethereum 2.0 implementation. Hauner told Cointelegraph:

“Altair has made two important changes. First, it adds support for lightweight clients, which are low-resource nodes that follow the chain with fewer features and slightly weaker security assumptions. Think of a light button on your phone or in your browser. Second, the penalties for offline behavior and hacks have been increased. These penalties are kept low from the start, so we’re not punishing users who are just starting to learn the ropes. The amalgamation will increase these penalties. Aside from these two big changes, there are some more efficient and organized ones. ”

The Altair upgrade was a hard fork, meaning that each of the 250,000 validators who did not upgrade are now offline and their ETH holdings will be dwindling at a rate of around 10% per year.

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To be compatible with the Altair upgrade, signaling node operators need to upgrade their client version, which only takes around 10 minutes.

While participation fell to 93.3% in the first epoch after the upgrade, it rose quickly to around 95% and has since grown to around 98.7% and around one percent more.

“It looked like we had practically all of the validators online and with Altair,” said Hauner. It’s hard to talk about these data protection systems, but I would say we don’t have more than 1-2% still offline. ”

According to Beacon Chain data, this has around 247,400 active validators and 3,000 inactive validators.

Ethereum 2.0 developer Jeff Coleman tweeted“If they don’t fix it, they cross the threshold and get kicked out.”

“I believe there will be a full decline once they drop below 16 ETH, which will take quite a while as the network is still maturing,” said Coleman.

“The protocol doesn’t differentiate between an un-upgraded validator and a validator that is temporarily offline due to power or network problems. Those logs, which are not updated, just need to update their nodes and then restart. You will start validation again, explains Hauner, when your node catches up with the Altair chain.

Ethereum developers will breathe a sigh of relief as a successful upgrade means the merger will be completed, and the planned goal is to be ready by February 2022 to turn Proof of Work off forever.

Developer Ben Edgington described the importance of the upgrade in a blog post earlier this month:

“This is our only real practice of updating the beacon chain before merging. If things go bad (perhaps because many manufacturers did not upgrade their customers in time), it will certainly postpone the consolidation date. ”

“The Proof-of-Stake upgrade, called The Merge, will be the largest upgrade in Ethereum history.”

“The Altair upgrade will give us valuable experience to ensure The Merge runs smoothly when it is ready to roll out in 2022,” said Edgington.

Continue reading: Ethereum closer to 2.0 inches with Beacon Chain Altair upgrade

The Beacon Chain is the first phase of the new proof-of-stake blockchain from Ethereum, which will merge with the existing mainnet as part of the Ethereum 2.0 implementation.

PoS is 99% more energy efficient than PoW, the method Bitcoin (BTC) miners use, and relies on distributors and validators rather than miners.

The final upgrade from Ethereum 2.0 is expected in early to mid-2022.