The Merge is coming! – The network Ethereum is preparing to pass a historic milestone since its creation. Indeed, it will abandon the Proof of Work in favor of the Proof of Stake. This transition will take place through a update titled The Merge. However, this includes two step : Bellatrix and Paris.
The Merge starts today with Bellatrix
The Merge is at the turn. Indeed, the update which aims to abandon Proof of Work and moving the Ethereum network to Proof of Stake is only a few days away from being deployed on the mainnet.
Obviously, like any major update, this one takes place in several stages.
The first stage begins today, September 6 with the deployment of the update Bellatrix on the beacon chain.
As a reminder, the beacon chain is a blockchain launched in December 2020, which evolves in parallel with Ethereum. Its sole mission is to ensure consensus in Proof of Stake. In technical language, the beacon chain is also called ” consensus layer “.
In practice, the Bellatrix update will bedeployed at 12:34 p.m. French time on the beacon chain.
What does the Bellatrix update bring?
Bellatrix is a beacon chain update that aims to get her ready for the merge. This includes several changes.
First of all, the major addition of Bellatrix lies in the introduction of the trade executionon the beacon chain. Indeed, for the moment, it is the minors who ensure the execution of the transactions. However, with the abandonment of Proof of Work, this mission will now be carried out byvalidators .
After Bellatrix, validators will be armed to execute transactions. The latter will still have to wait for the final abandonment of the Proof of Work planned a few days after the deployment of Bellatrix.
Secondly, Bellatrix makes it possible to updatethe parameters relating to penalties. Indeed, the values of the penalty parameters had been minimized to give validators time to familiarize themselves with the process, without penalizing them too much in the event of errors.
However, with the arrival of Proof of Stake, these parameters will be set to their final values when Bellatrix is deployed.
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Paris update and abandonment of Proof of Work
Once the Bellatrix update is deployed, the Ethereum network will be able to continue its transition. This time it will be the turn of running layerto be updated.
This will be updated via the update Pariswhich should be deployed around September 15 . In practice, the deployment of Paris will not take place at a given block height, but when the network reaches a Total Difficulty to determine.
Once this Total Difficulty is reached, the Paris update will be deployed and will mark the transition to Proof of Stake . Therefore, blocks will no longer be processed by miners, but by validators.
The transition will be considered as completewhen the first block createdby the beacon chain will be finalized. This will be done after about 2 epoch, or about ten minutes.
After this point, Ethereum will have completed its long-awaited transition from Proof of Work to Proof of Stake.
As this event approaches, many users are wondering what to do with their tokens. Note thatyour ETH will not change and no action will be required on your part.
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