- Ethereum developers confirmed the block time and date for the Altair upgrade.
- Developers released a bug bounty program worth $50,000 for all defects found on Ethereum 2.0.
- The Altair upgrade is a “warm-up upgrade” leading to the upcoming merge.
Ethereum is transitioning to proof of stake with new protocol upgrades being implemented to support a seamless transition. The value of the network is yet uncontested; however, a consensus mechanism transformation is an advantageous upgrade helping the network evolve and contend with upcoming Gen 3 blockchains. Ethereum developers have announced a date for the Altair upgrade as they prepare a new network sequence.
Confirming The Merge
Ethereum foundation announced the upcoming Altair Upgrade is scheduled to launch at epoch 74240, at approximately 10:56:23am (UTC) on October 27th. As per the announcement, the upgrade is intended to bring light-client support for the core consensus on the Beacon Chain, helping Beacon Chain clients and developers prepare for the upcoming merge.
The Ethereum 2.0 transition entails PoS, and PoW working in tandem. Thus, Altair creates a “low stakes warm-up” clean up of validator rewards. Each Beacon Chain validator is required to update their client to prevent any downtime penalties.
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As with most recent Ethereum upgrades, new protocol updates do not affect ETH, or those partaking in the PoW consensus chain. Instead, validators staking on the Beacon Chain are required to update the latest version in order to prevent being stuck in an “incompatible chain”
The EIP-2982 abstract, drafted by Danny Ryan and Vitalik Buterin, highlights that the Altair upgrade will introduce “punitive penalties” to secure the network for vast security threats. Thus, in the protocol, penalties such as ‘slashing’ and ‘inactivity leak’ prevent malicious validation sequences, therefore ensuring network security.
On The Flipside
- Ethereum’s price did not increase as expected, despite the token burning over $1 billion worth of ETH.
- Ethereum users will be able to use both PoS and PoW chains after the merge has completed.
Network Bounty
Ethereum’s staking endeavor aims to mitigate any deployments or code issues to ensure that trust is retained and propagated as the network undergoes significant changes. As such, the Ethereum Foundation released a bug bounty program, incentivizing network participants and ethical hackers to report code flaws in return for financial rewards.
Specifically, Ethereum offers up to $50,000 in bounties for developers that discover code inconsistencies. The bounty helps to create a robust code review process, ensuring the advancement of the network’s security ahead of the Altair upgrade.
The bounty program is established using a point-based system where rewards are attributed according to the issue’s severity. The overall intention is to identify inconsistencies in the ETH 2.0 protocol; issues in the Altair upgrade weigh double. Therefore, four severity tiers have been established, with rewards ranging from between 50,000 DAI to 2,000 DAI based on the severity of the issue.
Expectancy of a Network Spike
Ethereum 2.0 is progressing towards its intended form with chain merge being gradually completed. However, with over 8.1 million ETH tokens staked, Ethereum is incurring development delays in order to guarantee network stability and security. Twitter user and Beacon Chain community consultant superphiz.eth noted that the final merge is expected to be finalized in 2022.
Still, Ethereum has successfully transitioned into a new era. pre EIP-1559, Vitalik noted that, while the new update is contrary to community demands, it helps ETH tokens become more valuable as they execute a deflationary economic model. Thus, over $1 billion worth of ETH tokens have been burned since the successful implementation of the London Hard Fork.
Why You Should Care?
Ethereum has been silent and followed Bitcoin to the dot as market prices fluctuated. However, as Ethereum increases its scarcity levels, ETH tokens will eventually detach from the BTC pairing, and could rally without a catalyzing agent.
