Altair: Ethereum 2.0’s First Update!

The Ethereum community has been restlessly waiting for the rollout of Ethereum 2.0. Although there has been a number of delays, which left the door open for Ethereum’s competitors to gain ground, It would appear that the Ethereum 2.0 upgrade may be taking place sooner than we know it. In this article, we will be discussing Ethereum 2.0’s first upgrade: The Altair hard fork.

Altair Basics

Altair is the first step towards getting developers ready for the transition from Ethereum’s current Proof of Work consensus mechanism to the Ethereum 2.0 Proof of Stake consensus mechanism. This first step in the transition between Ethereum and Ethereum 2.0 is scheduled to take place right before Halloween, on October 27th, 2021. The main goal of Altair is to advance the economic logics of the Ethereum network and introduce “light client” support to Ethereum’s core consensus. Similarly, to the hard forks we have seen with Ethereum 1.0, ETH holders, and smart contract users will not be affected by the Altair upgrade. The state of mining on the current Ethereum 1.0 Proof of Work network will not be affected by the Altair update either.

The Beacon Chain

The Beacon chain is a coordination mechanism which is helping to facilitate the crossover from the current Ethereum network to the Ethereum 2.0 network. The Beacon chain is responsible for creating new blocks and making sure those blocks are valid. In a sense, the beacon chain acts as the backbone for the Ethereum 2.0 Proof of Stake blockchain. The Altair update will merge the beacon chain with the current Ethereum network. This effectively signifies the true beginning of the Ethereum 2.0 network.

EIP 1559 and EIP 3554

Ethereum has already gone through two major updates within the last few months. The first update of the two – EIP 1559 – took place on August 5th of 2021. EIP 1559 dramatically changed the way miners on the Ethereum blockchain are rewarded for consolidating transactions. EIP 1559 made it so miners could no longer set the gas fees for validation on the network. After this update, gas fees were then set by the network itself, and burned with each transaction.

EIP 3554 deals entirely with the Ethereum difficulty bomb. The Ethereum difficulty bomb causes the cryptographic puzzle which is required by miners to solve when mining blocks on the Ethereum blockchain to become increasingly difficult. Sooner than later, the Ethereum difficulty bomb will cause the cryptographic puzzle to become so complex that mining Ethereum on the Ethereum 1.0 blockchain will become so complex that there will be little to no incentive for miners to participate on the Proof of Work network. This is known as the Ethereum ice age. The idea is to drive Ethereum 1.0 miners to become validators on the Ethereum 2.0 Proof of Stake network. The implementation of EIP 3554 delayed the activation of the difficulty bomb by six months, however once EIP 3554 takes full effect, Ethereum 1.0 will become completely unmineable.

Conclusion

Ethereum is the second largest cryptocurrency by market cap, because of its flexibility when it comes to meeting the newest market demands. Be sure to check out the Killer Whale Products Page to find the Killer Whale signals and strategies that are right for you! We recommend taking a look at both Killer Whale Premium Signals and Killer Whale Large Cap Sector Strategy .

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