Ethereum Founder Issues Urgent Upgrade Warning After Wild Bitcoin and Crypto Price Swings

Ethereum, the second-largest cryptocurrency after bitcoin, is about to undergo a major upgrade that coincides with a potential “black swan” crypto event.

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Ethereum price has been swinging wildly over the past month as traders try to assess how the Ethereum merger upgrade will affect the market. Over the past few months, the price of ethereum crashed below $1,000 per ether, only to rebound to above $2,000. Ethereum price is currently trading around $1,500. Bitcoin price is barely managing to keep its head above water after a chief executive of the crypto exchange warned that “anything could happen” during the bitter crypto winter.

Now, Ethereum co-founder and spiritual leader of the project, Vitalik Buterin, has warned users to update their Ethereum clients before the hard fork beacon chain begins early next week.

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“Reminder: Even though the merge takes place around September 10 and September 20, the beacon chain hard fork is September 6,” Buterin said. job to Twitter. “Be sure to update your customers before that!”

The so-called bellatrix upgrade will initiate the ethereum merger and will be activated on Monday next week. The Ethereum mainnet merger is then expected to begin between September 10 and September 20.

Buterin, who made a startling Ethereum price prediction in July, also linked to an Ethereum foundation blog post which warned Ethereum clients Erigon and Geth need to be updated urgently 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: The v2022.08.03-alpha release of Erigon contains an important fix to crash production and a number of other minor fixes,” reads the post, authored by the Ethereum Foundation protocol support team. “All Erigon users are recommended to upgrade to this version or later before the merge. The geth 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 sweeping merger upgrade, which has been in the works for years, will see the network transition from Bitcoin’s proof-of-work consensus mechanism to the more energy-efficient proof-of-stake, allowing Ethereum holders to “bet” their ether on securing the network in exchange for freshly minted coins. The move 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
BNB
solana and cardano all use proof-of-stake or some variation of it.

Meanwhile, staking has been predicted to have a deflationary effect on Ethereum as people lock in their coins, suppressing supply as demand increases. Ethereum started to go deflationary last year, with more coins being “burned” than distributed to so-called miners verifying transactions on the blockchain.

“Around the merger, we can expect increased Ethereum price volatility, however, Ethereum prices should be positively impacted overall in the long term due to Ethereum’s ability to change,” said writes Max Kordek, managing director of blockchain application platform Lisk, in an email. comments.