Ethereum rallied to a new all-time high of $4,400 late Thursday, according to data from CoinMarketCap. What Happened At the time of writing, the second-largest cryptocurrency by market cap was trading at around $4,340, gaining 5 percent in the last 24 hours. The coin had a daily trading volume of $25 billion and accounted for nearly 20 percent of the crypto market. Ethereum’s rally follows the completion of the Altair Beacon Chain update, which was successfully activated on the network following a majority of nodes upgrading. According to data from the Beacon Chain, 99.28 percent of the 250,000 validators were active at press time. Why It Matters The Altair upgrade is a significant event in Ethereum’s transition to a Proof-of-Stake (PoS) network, with the upgrade paving the way for the “merge” to take place. “Right now, Ethereum has both a PoS and a (Proof-of-Work) PoW chain running in parallel with each …