• Ethereum developers successfully complete the Bellatrix upgrade, coming a step closer to the final Merge.
• The Merge upgrade shall be followed by Surge, Verge, and other phases that the Ethereum blockchain should undergo to complete a 100 percent process.

As per the previous schedule, the much-awaited Bellarix upgrade on the Ethereum blockchain has finally gone live today, September 9, 11 AM UTC. This takes us one step closer to the Merge upgrade.

The Bellatrix upgrade strengthens the Beacon Chain and prepares the Ethereum mainnet for the Merge. As the Merge takes place tentatively on September 15, the Ethereum blockchain will transition to a Proof-of-Stake network. In his tweet earlier today, Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin wrote:

The merge is still expected to happen around Sep 13-15. What’s happening today is the Bellatrix hard fork, which *prepares* the chain for the merge. Still important though – make sure to update your clients!

As the Ethereum blockchain transitions to a PoS consensus model, miners will have no role in minting new blocks. Instead, the ETH stakers will take the center stage and Ethereum validators shall keep the network running.

The transition to Ethereum PoS shall make the blockchain more scalable, faster, and efficient. It will also make the Ethereum network more environmentally friendly.

With the Bellatrix upgrade going live, the Ethereum (ETH) price shot up 5 percent going past $16.50. As of press time, ETH is trading 4.39 percent up at a price of $1,650 and a market cap of $204 billion.

All eyes on the Ethereum Paris upgrade

The Bellatrix upgrade is the last before the final Paris upgrade takes place in mid-September. The Paris upgrade will completely stop the mining activity on the Ethereum blockchain and switch from a Proof-of-Work validation system to a Proof-of-Stake mechanism.

While Ethereum developers have been working actively on the Merge upgrade, there’s nothing much to do for investors and speculators. However, ETH stakers and node operators will have to sync and update their clients. The Ethereum Foundation, a non-profit organization running the Ethereum blockchain, noted:

Mainnet Merge client releases are out. The time to configure your nodes is now. If you are a staker and did not previously run an Execution Layer client, make sure to configure your system and give sufficient lead time to sync Mainnet (which can take many days!).

What after the Merge?

Earlier this year, Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin gave a 50 percent progress development rating to Ethereum Merge. In addition, he also mentioned Merge, Surge, Verge, and other phases that the Ethereum blockchain should undergo to complete a 100 percent process.

After the Bellatrix upgrade, the next stage is the surge which will introduce zk-rollups, the Layer 2 scaling solution. This method uses the Ethereum sidechain to consolidate and execute several transactions at once. This will put less stress on the Ethereum mainnet. To further enhance the chain verification participants, the capacity storage is optimized and node size is decreased. After the Merge and Surge, the focus will be on Ethereum sharding.

The Ethereum sharding is a distributed database solution that will speed up both database and network transactions. Upon using sharding, the trade ledge of Ethereum will support several participating users. To speed up the transaction processing, Ethereum sharding plans to add 64 shards. The successful implementation of Ethereum sharding will lead to 80 percent completion of the Ethereum PoS transitions. Serenity, referred to as the completeness of Ethereum could be attained in 2023.