Ethereum founder issues urgent upgrade warning after wild bitcoin and cryptocurrency swings
Ethereum, the second largest cryptocurrency after bitcoin, is on the cusp of a major upgrade that coincides with a potential crypto “black swan” event.
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Ethereum price has fluctuated wildly over the past month as traders try to gauge how ethereum’s merger upgrade will affect the market. In recent months, the ethereum price has crashed to below $1,000 per ether, only to rebound to more than $2,000. The Ethereum price is currently trading around $1,500. The Bitcoin price, meanwhile, is barely keeping its head above water after a crypto exchange CEO warned “anything can happen” during the bitter crypto winter.
Now, ethereum co-founder and the project’s spiritual leader Vitalik Buterin has warned users to update their ethereum clients before the beacon chain hard fork begins early next week.
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“Reminder: although the merge will come around September 10-September 20, the beacon chain hard fork is on September 6,” Buterin posted to Twitter. “Be sure to update your customers before then!”
The so-called bellatrix upgrade starts the merging of ethereum and will be activated on Monday next week. The Ethereum mainnet merge is then scheduled to begin between September 10th and September 20th.
Buterin, who made a surprise ethereum price prediction in July, also linked to an Ethereum Foundation blog post warning ethereum clients Erigon and geth need to be updated as soon as the long-awaited merger upgrade approaches. Ethereum clients allow ethereum nodes to read blocks on the blockchain and view transaction, mining and smart contract interfaces.
“Warning: Erigon version v2022.08.03-alpha contains an important fix to block production and a number of other minor updates,” said the post, written by the Ethereum Foundation’s protocol support team. “All Erigon users are advised to upgrade to this or a later version before the merge. get version v1.10.22 contains a critical database issue, do not use this version, and if you have already upgraded, please upgrade to v1.10.23 as soon as possible .”
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Ethereum’s radical merger upgrade, which has been in the works for years, will see the network shift from bitcoin’s proof-of-work consensus mechanism to the more power-efficient proof-of-stake, allowing ethereum holders to “stake” their ether to secure the network in return for newly minted coins. The transition to proof-of-stake is expected to reduce ethereum’s carbon emissions by 99%, according to the Ethereum Foundation.
Ethereum rivals such as Binance’s BNB
Meanwhile, staking has been predicted to have a deflationary effect on Ethereum as people lock up their coins, suppressing supply as demand increases. Ethereum started to become deflationary last year, with more coins being “burned” than were distributed to so-called miners who verify transactions on the blockchain.
“Around the merger we can expect increased volatility on the ethereum price, but overall ethereum prices should be positively affected in the long term due to ethereum’s capacity to change,” wrote Max Kordek, CEO of blockchain application platform Lisk, in an e -mail. comments.