Ethereum’s ‘Bellatrix’ Upgrade Goes Live

The Bellatrix hard fork, the last major upgrade before Ethereum moves from Proof of Work (PoW) to Proof of Stake (PoS) has been activated.

The purpose of this upgrade is to ensure validators are producing updated Beacon Chain blocks that will set up the codebase ahead of the Merge.

“What’s happening today is the Bellatrix hard fork, which *prepares* the chain for the merge,” Vitalik Buterin, founder of Ethereum, said in a Tweet.  “Still important though — make sure to update your clients!”

Once the terminal total difficulty (TTD) is reached, mining on Ethereum will end completely, and ‘the Merge’ will take place. Technically that is scheduled, not at a fixed time, but after a TTD of 58750000000000000000000 is reached and the first PoS block is created on the Ethereum blockchain. From that point on, the Paris Upgrade will be in effect.

Based on the current Ethereum network hashrate that is expected to occur shortly after 9:00 pm ET on Wednesday, Sept. 14.

Around 5% of the Beacon Chain’s validating nodes failed to update in time, according to Adrian Sutton, Lead Blockchain Protocol Engineer at ConsenSys, but that has no major effect on the network and is likely to be quickly remedied.

The price of ether is up 7.2% over the past 24 hours, according to data compiled by Blockworks, outpacing bitcoin by about 6%.

This is a developing story.

Attend Europe’s leading institutional crypto conference at a discount.   Only 3 days left to save £250 on tickets – Use code LONDON250.