The Altair Beacon Chain upgrade is ready to activate on the Ethereum mainnet. The upgrade will go live at epoch 74240 (October 27, 2021, 10:56:23 UTC).
Client versions
In order to be compatible with the Altair upgrade, beacon node operators must update the client version they are running. If you run a validator, you must upgrade to continue tracking the mainnet beacon chain. Failure to do so will result in downtime penalties.
The versions listed below support the Altair mainnet upgrade.
EDIT: The following table has been modified to reference the latest versions of the Altair client before the mainnet upgrade. These contain security fixes and optimizations, so we recommend all users upgrade to the latest versions.
*Customer versions marked with an asterisk have changed since the original announcement.
Upgrade for validators
While this upgrade has been extensively tested if you are a validator on Mainnet, we strongly recommend being online during the upgrade in case any unforeseen issues arise.
Bug Bounty Bonus
To draw more attention to the Altair Upgrade, all bounties for Altair Upgrade-related vulnerabilities have been doubled by four weeks after launch (November 27). Altair’s critical bugs in clients and specs are now worth up to $100,000.
See the bug bounty program for more details.
FAQs
As an Ethereum user or Ether holder, do I need to do anything?
This upgrade only affects the beacon chain consensus mechanism and does not not affect end-user accounts, contracts, and state secured by the proof-of-work chain.
If you are running your own beacon node, you must upgrade your node. See “As a non-validating tag node operator, what should I do?” ” below.
As a non-validating tag node operator, what should I do?
Download the latest version of your beacon node client, as shown in the table above.
As a validator, what should I do?
Download the latest version of the software you are running, as shown in the table above. Follow all release instructions and reboot your node with your standard reboot procedure.
Note that node software that supports independent validation clients will also require an upgrade and restart of this component. Please read the warnings and instructions contained in official releases.
What happens if I’m a validator or node operator and don’t participate in the upgrade?
If you are using a Beacon Node client that is not updated to the latest version (listed above), your client will sync with the pre-fork Beacon chain after the upgrade. You will be stuck on an incompatible channel following the old rules.
If you run a validator, it will not be able to participate in the upgraded consensus and will continue to operate on the Beacon Chain Network after the upgrade. This will result in penalties regarding the upgraded Mainnet channel.
What happens during a Beacon Chain Network upgrade?
Once the Ethereum community has reached agreement on what changes to include in the upgrade, the protocol changes are written to the various clients. Changes to the beacon chain protocol are activated at a specific epoch number. Any nodes that have not been upgraded to the new set of rules will be abandoned on the old chain where the previous rules can continue to exist.
Why “Altaïr”?
After community discussion and emoji voting, client teams decided to use star names for each upgrade, with the sequence of upgrade names listed alphabetically.
Altair begins with an “A”, is the twelfth brightest star in the night sky, rotates quite rapidly with an equatorial velocity of 286 km/s, and is the location of the brightest star in the night sky. Forbidden planet. A pretty cool star if you ask us.
THANKS!
Many thanks to all the researchers, engineers, and community members who put incredible work into this first upgrade to the Beacon Chain Network.
Now let’s move on to the merger 🚀
Disclaimer
This is an emerging and evolving highly technical space. If you choose to implement the recommendations in this article and continue to participate, you should make sure you understand how it affects you. You should understand that there are risks, including but not limited to risks such as unexpected bugs. By choosing to implement these recommendations, you alone assume the risks and consequences. This article and recommendations do not constitute a sale of any kind and do not create any warranty of any kind, including but not limited to anything relating to the Ethereum network or the Ethereum clients mentioned in the this document.
