With every passing day, the implementation of “The Merge” is closing in. The developers of Ethereum’s upgrade have already started making necessary changes and upgrades to ready the blockchain system for the Hard Fork.

Bellatrix Upgrade

The upcoming upgrade prior to the final implementation of “The Merge” is the Bellatrix upgrade. The particular upgrade is set to take place on Tuesday.

Therefore, the developers have started taking necessary actions and steps to smoothen the implementation of the Bellatrix upgrade.

Merge Ready Nodes

Ethernodes, which is responsible for recording the implementation of The Merge has confirmed that so far, 73.5% of the total nodes of Ethereum have been marked as ready.

The mentioned percentage of the Ethereum nodes has been updated with the “Merge ready” status even before the implementation of the Bellatrix upgrade has taken place.

Importance of Bellatrix Upgrade

According to the Ethereum developers, the Bellatrix upgrade is considered the final step towards the implementation of the final “Merge”.

The Bellatrix upgrade would ensure that the final protocol (Merge) faces no issues when switching the Ethereum protocol to proof-of-stake (PoS).

Initially, it was reported that the Merge upgrade would be implemented on September 15. Recently, the teams behind the development of the Merge, announced that the implementation may be executed between September 10 and September 20.

Expectations from the Node Operators

The Merge development teams have made it clear that it is very important that the Ethereum node operators must implement the Bellatrix upgrade.

It is extremely important that all of the Ethereum node operators must have upgraded their nodes to the Bellatrix protocol. Therefore, it is important that every operator complies with the upgrading process of the nodes to smoothen Merge’s implementation.

26.5% of Nodes Still need to be upgraded

While the majority of the operator nodes have been upgraded, there is still 26.5% of nodes that are to be upgraded.

The Ethereum Foundation has confirmed that the status of the 26.5% is still “Not Ready”. Vitalik Buterin, the founder of Ethereum blockchain, and Tim Beiko, the core developer of Ethereum have asked the rest of the operators to upgrade their nodes.

They have stressed that upgrading the nodes is very important and it must be executed before The Merge can be implemented.

Both personalities took it to their Twitter profile to ask all the responsible operators to ensure that the upgrades were implemented accordingly.

Smooth Implementation of Merge

If all nodes are upgraded accordingly and within the given timeframe, the situation would become favorable for the Merge developers. It is being expected that no issues will be implemented once the implementation of the protocol takes place.