The long-planned upgrade of the Ethereum network to a scalable proof-of-stake consensus model is drawing closer as developers set a date for the Altair upgrade.

Described as the first mainnet upgrade for the Beacon Chain, Altair is slated for the 74240 era around October 27, according to Ethereum Foundation researcher Danny Ryan.

Ryan describes the technical upgrade as follows:

“This upgrade provides light customer support for the core consensus, cleans up the billing of signaling status incentives, fixes some issues with validation incentives and updates the sanction parameters according to EIP-2982.”

EIP-2982 introduces “penalty parameters” to ensure that the proof-of-stake protocol is economically secure. “Failure Leak” and “Slash” are two suggested penalties in the improvement proposal.

Ethereum’s London hard fork arrived almost on schedule on August 5th, kicking off the highly anticipated EIP 1559 proposal. Proponents have touted EIP-1559 as a deflationary switch because it burns up base fees and thereby reduces the circulating supply of ETH.

Related: Ethereum alternatives and Layer-One solutions see steady gains in September

Joseph Lubin, who co-founded Ethereum before joining ConsenSys, said London was setting ETH on the path to becoming “supersonic money”. The concept of “healthy” money or “overflowing” money was popularized by the Bitcoin (BTC) community and refers to an asset that is not prone to sudden loss of value or purchasing power.

ETH price fell sharply on Tuesday as the cryptocurrency was sold along with other risky assets, including stocks. ETH was last traded at $ 2,822 after falling 6.5% that day.