The upgrade is seen as one of the last critical steps for the Merge to complete. After this, the proof-of-work chain will migrate to proof-of-stake upon hitting a specific Total Difficulty value.
To be ready, Ethereum node operators must activate the Bellatrix upgrade by updating its consensus layer clients before epoch 144896 on the Beacon Chain, which is scheduled to roll out at 11:34:47am UTC on Sept. 6, 2022, according to the Ethereum Foundation.
For 26.7% of nodes marked “Not-Ready”, Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin and core developer Tim Beiko have pushed on Twitter for the remaining node operators to update their clients.
Node operators that don’t make the update before the Bellatrix upgrade will cause the Ethereum clients to “sync to the pre-fork blockchain,” Ethereum Foundation warning:
“[Node operators] will be stuck on an incompatible chain following old rules and will be unable to send Ether or operate on the post-Merge Ethereum network.”
According to Ethernodes, most of the “Not-Ready” nodes are Geth clients, who have yet to upgrade to Geth v1.10.23 or higher. Other Ethereum clients that are required updating include Erigon, Besu, and Nethermind.
Ethereum nodes are essential to validate blocks and can be run by different Ethereum client software that varies in the programming language used and code base.
After Bellatrix upgrade, the last process of the Ethereum Merge is the “Paris event,” which is estimated to occur around Sept 15 when the Terminal Total Difficulty (TTD) reaches 58750000000000000000000.
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