The Ethereum Bellatrix upgrade, which kicks off the final countdown for the much-anticipated Merge upgrade, is now live.
ETH price shot above $1,678 minutes after the Bellatrix upgrade was activated. At press time, ETH price had, however, dropped to $1,598.80 almost eroding the gains made after the Bellatrix upgrade.
The Bellatrix upgrade has added impetus to the recovering Ether that had previously been struggling amid strong bearish headwinds.
What is the Bellatrix upgrade?
The Merge is a two-step process and the first step is the Bellatrix upgrade that was triggered by an epoch height. The second step is the Paris upgrade that will be triggered by the targeted Terminal Total Difficulty (TTD) of 58750000000000000000000 expected to be reached between September 13th and 15th.
Bellatrix is the last upgrade on Ethereum’s Beacon Chain before the Ethereum blockchain completely shifts from proof-of-work (PoW) to proof-of-stake (Pos). The Beacon Chain went live last year.
Currently, each Ethereum node is represented on two different layers, the main chain which is a proof-of-work layer and the C layer (consensus layer). The Merge is expected to combine these two layers and transition to a PoS-based blockchain.
Bellatrix upgrade will enable validators to start producing updated Beacon Blocks, which will then contain the codebase for the merging of the two layers.