The final countdown to the Ethereum Merge begins as Bellatrix upgrade is completed

Ethereum’s transition to proof-of-stake seems to be within reach, as the Bellatrix upgrade was completed on Tuesday. Bellatrix, refers to an upgrade that will help Ethereum completely transition into a proof-of-stake mechanism without any troubles.

Bellatrix impact

As per data from Ethereum's blockchain discovery service Ethernodes, before Bellatrix, about 73.5% of Ethereum nodes were marked as merge ready. Bellatrix is the final upgrade before the Paris upgrade, which will occur following the merge.

Vitalik Buterin, co-founder of Ethereum took to Twitter to announce the expected dates of the merge.

Overview on Ethereum's recent developments

With the successful completion of the Bellatrix upgrade, Ethereum is set to its final upgrade, the Paris Upgrade will put an end to mining on the Ethereum Blockchain and will mark the transition from proof-of-work to proof-of-stake consensus system.

Earlier on September 4, crypto exchange FTX released a statement regarding the Ethereum mainnet Merge. The exchange also suspended the native $ETH and ERC-20 token deposits and withdrawals approximately half an hour before the Bellatrix consensus layer upgrade. The exchange will also suspend the withdrawals during the Paris execution layer upgrade.

In August, Ethereum merged one of its most active testnetworks, Goerli, from proof of work to proof of stake– indicating completion of the third and final step before Ethereum’s total transition to proof of stake.

As per the data by Coindesk, Ether (ETH) surpassed $1,685.00 around 8:30 a.m. EDT (Eastern daylight time) and an hour before the Bellatrix upgrade, Ether also reached intraday high but soon after the upgrade the prices have dropped.

In order to become Merge-ready, Ethereum's nodes need to work with this Bellatrix upgrade by updating its consensus layer clients before a scheduled update epoch 144896 on the Beacon Chain. An epoch, along with all the blocks of transactions that make it, is only considered finalized after the progression of two more epochs after it. Keeping an eye on epochs can help detect any network abnormalities.

Impacts of Merge

Ethereum Foundation believes that after the successful completion of merge, Ethereum's carbon footprint will be lowered by over 99%.

This Merge is expected to make the Ethereum blockchain faster, more scalable, and much more energy efficient. Ethereum’s lack of energy efficiency has long been a complaint among environmentalists, who have argued that the blockchain consumes a large chunk of energy in order to function. The merge will pave the way for scalability upgrades like sharding, which could also improve existing inefficiencies in the system.