First-Ever Ethereum 2.0 Upgrade Altair Date Confirmed by Ethereum Foundation
The "Altair Mainnet Announcement" by Danny Ryan invites all node operators of Ethereum 2.0 to upgrade their software to avoid the validator downtime penalty.
Altair will be activated on Oct. 27, 2021
According to the official blog post by Mr. Ryan, the Altair beacon chain (ETH2 initial phase) upgrade will go live in mainnet at epoch 74240. This epoch is expected to come at 10:56 a.m. UTC on Oct. 27, 2021.
Altair Mainnet launch at epoch 74240 (Oct 27, 2021, 10:56:23am UTC)!https://t.co/fTxZBLQqJ5
Upgrade your nodes!
Now, onward to the Merge ?— dannyryan ? (@dannyryan) October 5, 2021
To keep their nodes synchronized with post-Altair consensus, node operators should upgrade their clients. Software builds for all clients—Lighthouse, Lodestar, Prysm, Nimbus and Teku—are available via the links in the announcement.
As with Ethereum 1.0 hardforks, end users, ETH holders, contracts and the state of the PoW network are not affected by the updates.
Ethereum 2.0's upgrade Altair is designed to advance the economic logics of network validating and to introduce "light client" support for its core consensus.
"Onward to the Merge"
EF launches a massive bug bounty campaign to ensure the security and performance of the post-Altair network. Before Nov. 27, 2021, Ethereum enthusiasts can disclose bugs and receive up to $100,000 in bounty bonuses.
As such, the Ethereum 2.0 network comes one step closer to the ETH1-ETH2 transition. By press time, more than 7.8 million Ethers are locked in the ETH2 deposit contract.
Amid the latest crypto capitalization spike, this sum exceeds $27 billion in equivalent. To provide context, Ethereum 2.0 deposit contract "capitalization" is higher than that of Yandex, Kia, Deutsche Bank, Panasonic and Societe Generale.