What is Ethereum Altair Update?

What is the Ethereum Altair update? When will the Ethereum Altair update take place? Which changes does the Ethereum Altair update include?

About three months after the London update, which also includes a transaction fee burning mechanism in Ethereum, a new update is coming. This update, called Altair, which is scheduled for Wednesday, October 27 at 13:56 CEST, also includes some important changes. Most importantly, Altair is the first update of the beacon chain, which was implemented last December and can be defined as a proof-of-stake experiment on Ethereum. It is stated that it may be the last update to be made before Altair transitions to proof-of-stake. With the Altair update, the use of "shard chain" on the main network will be possible. With it, Ethereum 2.0 is gaining full functionality. Shard chains spread the load of the network across 64 new blockchains, thus aiming to use the Ethereum network seamlessly during peak transactions. Also, shard chains keep hardware requirements low, making it easier to run a node. From this point of view, shard chains, which will improve the scalability and capacity of Ethereum, are planned to be in use after the mainnet merges with the beacon chain. According to Tim Beiko, who is responsible for the main developers of Ethereum, Altair has three main benefits. First, it will be possible for Ethereum network validators to process transfers more easily. Second, nodes will need to be actively involved in updates. Otherwise, nodes will be penalized. Moreover, this update will provide the opportunity to make sure that the network can be updated on the beacon chain without any problems. This is critical to the merger, and Beiko said, "We want to make sure it works well before the merger." It is stated that there is no action required by ordinary users for the update. However, those running beacon nodes were urged to update their client versions to act in line with the Altair update. Failure to do so will result in shutdown penalties.