Taking the training wheels off: Ethereum Altair upgrade less than one month away

Even as Ethereum alternatives, self styled Eth killers, continue to pick up pace in a wild scramble to snap at the giant altcoin's heels, Ethereum is continuing on apace with its development schedule to transfer to a proof of stake model in alignment with its vision to "support an efficient, global-scale, general-purpose transactional platform while retaining high crypto economic security and decentralization". And as the organization methodically moves in the direction of its goal, major investors continue to bet that the project won't be dethroned any time soon. Let's get into this.

Image by Miloslav Hamrik

Quick Review

As you guys may know, Ethereum, the largest altcoin by market cap, currently runs on a proof of work model, but is in the process of transitioning to proof of stake. To ensure that this is done seamlessly, the Beacon Chain was built in parallel to serve the core of the upgraded consensus, while the original proof-of-work chain continues to run. 

Developments to Date

On August 5th, 2021, Ethereum completed the London hard fork which saw the implementation of the Ethereum Improvement Proposal (EIP) 1559. EIP 1559 led to the burning of base fees, thus reducing the circulating supply of ETH. 

The Altair Upgrade

According to Ethereum 2.0 developer, Danny Ryan, the Altair mainnet upgrade to the Beacon Chain is set for just under one month away, October 27th, 10:56:23am UTC to be exact

The Altair upgrade makes minor upgrades to Eth 2.0, or, as Ryan explains in his blog on Ethereum's website, "This upgrade brings light-client support to the core consensus, cleans up beacon state incentive accounting, fixes some issues with validator incentives, and steps up the punitive params as per EIP-2982

After the Altair upgrade, developers can expect a number of changes as far as it relates to incentive and penalty values. According to , these include inactive validators facing the possibility of having their staked ETH balance slashed. Validators will also face higher penalties for malicious behavior such as double signing or double proposing blocks. 

The Altair upgrade  will also address an imbalance in the distribution of validator rewards.

Further updates on the Altair upgrade are expected on Monday, October 4th.

Ethereum Trading Price

Ethereum is currently trading at $2,982.87, down from a peak of $4,168.7 earlier this year. And before you gasp, just to add a little perspective, a year ago, on September 30th, Ethereum was trading for $353.21. 

So guys, what are your thoughts on these developments and on Ethereum's future potential?

Here's the thing. I don't know about y'all, but the way I see it, the timer has been set, the hour glass is overturned, I'm placing some bets on ETH, and, like a chipmunk, I am scurrying around gathering as much as I can.

That said, please note that I am NOT qualified to give investment advice. I haven't said that in a while, have I? Any investment you make, please conduct thorough research and ensure that you are satisfied with the project, its use case and projections for the future. It's the best advice that I can give.

Okay guys, that's it for me! And so, until the next time, please be safe!

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