The latest update to the Beacon Chain, called Altair, has been implemented correctly and over 98% of the nodes have been updated, equal to about 234k out of a total of 250k that currently have taken part in this phase which heralds the imminent transition from Proof Of Work to the more economical Proof of Stake from an energy point of view (currently expected in February 2022).
Altair has been a full-fledged Hard Fork for which validators who do not update the node will be considered offline and this means an increasing decrease in rewards until the final expulsion from the Beacon Chain. The latter is the blockchain created in December 2020 on which tests and updates are being carried out that will lead to the merger with the Ethereum blockchain and this will effectively mark the beginning of the PoS era.
The update introduces support for light clients (simplified nodes following the blockchain with less functionality) to fundamental consensus, reorganizes the accounting of state incentives, solves some problems related to the incentives of validators and increases the punitive parameters (penalties for offline validators).
The update therefore introduces the possibility of contributing to the decentralization of the network through simpler nodes to manage even for the hardware tools in possession of the validator: for example, it will be possible to start a simplified node on your smartphone. In this case the rewards will be lower than a full power node but the aim is to invite as many users as possible to be part of this great transformation.
Another important part is the increase in penalties for nodes that are often offline or that do not have a high standard of efficiency. A stable and secure network is the goal of the community and those who do not comply will be penalized and expelled in a short time.
The protocol sees no difference between a validator that hasn't updated and one that is temporarily offline due to power or network problems. Those who haven't updated must do so and restart their nodes. They will start validating again when the node catches up with the Altair blockchain, explained Hauner.
The success of the Hard Fork Altair confirms the update to the PoS by February 2020, but if there were problems, the date would probably have been postponed by a few months. Altair is therefore the latest update of the Beacon Chain before the merger with Ethereum. Now everything is ready for the great Ethereum revolution.