Ethereum upgrade confirmed, hard fork will be carried out on January 14-18, 2019

The Ethereum open-source development team has reached an agreement on the activation time of Constantinople, which aims to provide more and newer blockchain features to community users.

At the Ethereum core developer conference held on Friday (December 7), developers finally determined that block 7,080,000 on the Ethereum blockchain will be the hard fork activation point, and users can choose to upgrade to the new code from this block. If this is a bit difficult to understand, in simple terms, if Ethereum users choose to implement the Constantinople hard fork by upgrading the software, all functional updates will take effect after block 7,080,000 is mined.

Afri Schoedon, head of client product release at Ethereum wallet developer Parity Ethereum, said that the identification of block 7,080,000 as the activation point for the Constantinople hard fork means that the Constantinople hard fork may not be launched until January 14-18, 2019, because this new block number will only be introduced to the Ethereum platform in the next batch of software upgrades.

In addition, Martin Holst Swende, head of security at the Ethereum Foundation and "go-ethereum", revealed that in order to ensure that there are no unexpected problems during the Constantinople hard fork upgrade, they have released an upgraded version of the "go-ethereum" software, which includes an "emergency switch" function that allows users to delay the upgrade when an abnormality occurs.

Ethereum Constantinople hard fork has been full of twists and turns

Initially, the hard fork was scheduled for November this year, and Ethereum developers hoped to improve the efficiency of the blockchain by simplifying the platform code design. In addition, Ethereum also attempted to delay the implementation of the so-called "difficulty bomb" by 18 months - in fact, the difficulty bomb protocol was created shortly after the birth of Ethereum, making mining more and more difficult over time. In the "Constantinople" version, Ethereum's consensus algorithm will change from proof-of-work (PoW) to a hybrid consensus algorithm of proof-of-work and proof-of-stake (PoS) to improve the efficiency of the entire Ethereum blockchain, reduce fees, and eventually transition to the fourth phase of the pure proof-of-stake consensus algorithm. Not only that, the Constantinople hard fork upgrade also plans to reduce the Ethereum mining reward from 3 ETH per block to 2 ETH.

At the latest Ethereum Development Conference, developers also discussed ProgPoW, an improvement to Ethereum's basic proof-of-work algorithm that will prevent the use of ASIC-specific mining hardware devices from the network. Although the implementation of ProgPoW is progressing smoothly, developers have not yet made a decision on whether this algorithm should be included in any proposed software upgrades. Martin Holst-Stevend said:

“We should have the option first and then make the decision.”

Ethereum Developer Conference Implements Major Reform

It is worth mentioning that at this meeting, developers also discussed ethereum 1x - another upgrade proposed in 2019. Several ethereum development working groups have explained the progress of the project, but emphasized that the project is in its early stages.

Hudson Jameson, Chief Communications Officer at the Ethereum Foundation, said:

“As we are discussing the work being done by other Ethereum working groups, Ethereum has not yet decided whether to implement the ASIC-resistant ProgPoW consensus algorithm, nor has it confirmed that it will invest in it.”

Hudson Jameson also said that after discussing it on social media, the ethereum 1x upgrade route meeting will be held in public - which is very different from the previous ethereum "closed-door meeting", which was never recorded, but only released after the meeting was completed according to the "Chatham House Rules". Hudson Jameson finally said:

“From now on, we’re going to have open meetings.”