As many as 73.5% of Ethereum nodes are now marked as “Merge ready” ahead of the upcoming Bellatrix upgrade for Ethereum on Sept. 6, according to data from Ethernodes. The Bellatrix upgrade is seen as one of the last necessary steps prior to the official Merge, which will see Ethereum transition to a proof-of-stake consensus mechanism between Sept. 10-20. To become Merge ready, Ethereum node operators must comply with the Bellatrix upgrade by updating its consensus layer clients prior to epoch 144896 on the Beacon Chain, which is scheduled to take place on 11:34:47am UTC on Sept. 6, 2022, according to the Ethereum Foundation. Percentage of Ethereum clients that are Merge Ready. Source: Ethernodes. However, with as many as 26.7% of nodes marked “Not-Ready” for the Ethereum Merge, Ether...
Ahead of Ethereum’s highly anticipated switch to proof-of-stake (PoS), cyber security firm Cloudflare is set to launch and fully stake Ethereum validator nodes over the next few months. It aims to study energy efficiency, consistency management, and network speed of the PoS network as part of its commitment to environmental sustainability and to help “build a better internet.” Cloudflare was founded in 2010 and provides web security services such as distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) mitigation to protect clients from DDoS attacks. Cloudflare said it was experimenting with the “next generation of Web3 networks that are embracing proof of stake,” with Ethereum being the first in line for the company. At this stage, it appears the Merge and transition to a PoS consensus mechani...