Bellatrix, First of Two Ethereum Upgrades in Final Phase of The Merge, Goes Live 13

Bellatrix, First of Two Ethereum Upgrades in Final Phase of The Merge, Goes Live

  • The Bellatrix upgrade, one of the final stages in Ethereum Proof-of-Stake transition, has gone live.
  • The Merge will take place with the Paris upgrade, expected around September 15.
  • Some exchanges and platforms are suspending Ether deposits during this time.

The Bellatrix upgrade for Ethereum, one of the final upgrades before The Merge takes place, has gone live. Bellatrix is an important step towards The Merge, which should take place around September 15. The upgrade prepares the chain for The Merge.

the merge in progrss
Bellatrix Activated: Paritosh

Bellatrix ensures that the validators can produce updated beacon blocks, which hold the data for merging the consensus layer and the proof-of-work layer. The Merge will only take place during the Paris upgrade, which is expected to take place around September 15. This should be executed at triggered by Terminal Total Difficulty (TTD) of 58750000000000000000000. Subsequent blocks will be on the beacon, produced by validators.

The Ethereum Foundation has described the process as follows,

“Once the execution layer reaches or exceeds the TTD, the subsequent block will be produced by a Beacon Chain validator. The Merge transition is considered complete once the Beacon Chain finalizes this block. Under normal network conditions, this will happen 2 epochs (or ~13 minutes) after the first post-TTD block is produced.”

The price of Ether had gone up by 6% in the leadup to Bellatrix, and it currently sits at roughly $1,660. Analysts and industry insiders expect Ethereum to receive a strong push from The Merge, and are hoping that it will be the start of a good bull run.

Bellatrix upgrade pushing ETH price
ETH Price: TradingView

How Stakeholders Are Preparing

However, not all node operators have made the necessary changes to prepare for The Merge. About 26.7% of node operators could find themselves syncing to the pre-fork chain. Node operators have been asked to upgrade their clients before epoch 144896.

status of clients
Clients ready for The Merge: ethernodes.org

Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin also reminded them to do so. Ethereum core developer Tim Beiko also said the same on Twitter and was also celebrating the occasion.

Meanwhile, Binance has suspended deposits and withdrawals of Ether and Wrapped Ether on a few networks starting from September 6 until The Merge is complete. FTX has said that it will suspend ETH and ERC-20 token deposits and withdrawals half an hour before the Bellatrix upgrade. Aave will also not process Ether loans temporarily.