Altaïr is there; the merger is coming.
tl;dr
Altair Upgrade, October 27
Altair, the first mainnet upgrade to Beacon Chain, was planned for epoch 74240 (October 27, 2021, 10:56:23 UTC).
A subtle but great benefit of Proof of Stake is that we can accurately time upgrades (Sorry Tim! We’ll be done with Proof of Work soon :))
This upgrade brings thin client support to core consensus, cleans up beacon state incentive accounting, fixes some issues with validator incentives, and steps up punitive settings. according to EIP-2982.
A big thank you to the customer teams for their work on this subject throughout the year 🙌
Keep your eyes peeled for another blog post on Monday October 4th. This will include all versions of the Altair mainnet.
And then you can upgrade your nodes!
Merge interoperability specifications and upcoming devnets
THE Merge interoperability specifications was released on Friday. This “meta-specification” provides stable objectives to engineers for a first wave of testing and development.
After a flurry of specification activity over the past few months, the merge specifications are nearly complete and the core logic is stable. In this next phase, engineers will develop the merge logic and test their software with other teams on short-term development networks. Engineers will review the specifications as they exist today and provide dynamic feedback on the specifications to refine and/or resolve issues as they arise.
At the top of the list is validation and refinement of the Fusion Engine API and to prototype and specify various versions of synchronization under the fusion paradigm.
Proof-of-stake replacing proof-of-work is years in the making, and we’re just as excited as you are to see it in action. Lots of fun to come in October 🏺🚀
