Ethereum Homestead releases its first product version

Second-generation blockchain platform Ethereum has released the first production version of its “Homestead” software, which was implemented starting with block 1,150,000.

Homestead’s release comes on the heels of Ethereum’s Frontier, which was first released to developers in July 2015. And Homestead’s release comes at a time of heightened interest in open, public blockchain platforms that have attracted the attention of major financial institutions in part because of their support for smart contracts.

For example, blockchain consortium startup R3CEV launched its first test in January using a private version of the Ethereum network as its platform, with 11 major banks participating in the proof-of-concept.

Andrew Keys, co-founder of decentralized application development company ConsenSys, explained that while Frontier only has a command-line interface, Homestead will expand the platform users can use to build and the ease with which users can build proofs of concepts and minimum viable products.

Keys told CoinDesk:

“Homestead will bring about the second generation of blockchain technology, allowing us to achieve anything we can imagine in a decentralized way through Ethereum.”

Early members of the platform highlighted recent benchmarks as a sign of the project’s success, with financial firms increasingly interested in products that could replace the Bitcoin network.

Anthony Di Iorio, one of the founders of Ethereum and Chief Digital Officer of the Toronto Stock Exchange, said in an interview,

“We know that Microsoft and IBM have been working on projects on the Ethereum platform. And there are a lot of programmers who have been involved in the Ethereum platform. It is exciting to see the growth and gains in the early stages.”

When the software was officially released at around 18:50 UTC, members of the ethereum community celebrated via a Google Group Chat video.

Alex Van de Sande, chief designer of the Ethereum Foundation, said in a comment channel:

“This is the most unusual event I’ve ever hosted.”

Ethereum’s Growth

Inventor and project leader Vitalik Buterin announced the launch of the Ethereum project in January 2014. Ethereum then raised $18 million in crowdfunding, which provided financial support for the development of the platform.

The success of this controversial crowdsale brought the Ethereum platform to the attention and coverage of the Wall Street Journal and other major financial publications.

Since then, those who have closely followed the Ethereum project’s development have considered the health of the Ethereum network to be comparable to that of the Bitcoin network.

William Mougayar, special advisor to the Ethereum Foundation, told CoinDesk:

“You should look at the growth of the Ethereum network through the growth of nodes, which is about 5,100 to 6,000 for Bitcoin. This is a strong indicator of the stability and global nature of the Ethereum network.”

Mougayar said the Ethereum platform now processes about 25,000 transactions per day, a figure that is 10% of the Bitcoin network.

Since February, the price of ether, the Ethereum token that users use to pay for running applications, has been rising strongly. The total value of Ethereum tokens (ether) has now exceeded $1 billion, an annual growth rate of almost 5 times. However, it is unclear how much of this is not speculation.

Despite the rapid development of Ethereum, it is not so easy for users to buy Ethereum tokens ether. The trading platforms that support Ethereum include Poloniex, Kraken, Shapeshift, and recently Bitfinex.

However, Ethereum followers believe that as Ethereum develops, the number of trading platforms supporting Ethereum will increase.

Keys recommends:

“We are seeing a lot of interest in ethereum from cryptocurrency exchanges. We hope that many exchanges in the U.S. and abroad will add ether to their trading pairs.”

It is worth noting that the Bitfinex platform said that the high trading volume of ether is an important reason for their support of ether. On other exchanges, the trading volume of ether is already quite large.

Hard Fork Upgrade

The development work behind the upgrade is also noteworthy, as Ethereum underwent a hard fork during development, which resulted in fundamental changes to the protocol, making older versions incompatible with it.

The decision by Ethereum to implement a hard fork comes as the Bitcoin community has been embroiled in a months-long debate over how the Bitcoin network could be upgraded in a similar manner.

Ethereum stakeholders are therefore highlighting this decision in comparison to Bitcoin, suggesting that the framework network may be more adaptable to development needs.

Keys pointed out,

“Compared to the governance issues in the Bitcoin community, the Ethereum community supports making changes and reaching consensus on the Homestead upgrade.”

In a Q&A post on the Ethereum Reddit community, Ethereum project technical lead Taylor Gerring outlined issues users may encounter during the transition.

He pointed out that even without upgrading to Homestead, as long as users have their private keys, their tokens will still be safe, but users will not be able to connect to the network until the software upgrade is performed.

In the Bitcoin community, two competing development teams, the Bitcoin Classic team and the Bitcoin Core team, are still arguing about how to implement the hard fork.

The Bitcoin Classic team has been advocating for 75% of Bitcoin transaction validators to support their proposal to implement the hard fork with a 28-day grace period. On the other hand, the Bitcoin Core team believes that the hard fork should be carried out very slowly, advocating to submit the code this year and take effect in July 2017.

In an interview with CoinDesk, Gerring further explained the differences between the work of ethereum developers and bitcoin developers, claiming that the ethereum community has a responsibility to support the needs of users.

“The approach we’re taking is based on shutting down some of the middle block solutions that the ethereum community would not necessarily support, in stark contrast to the bitcoin community.”

Technical improvements

Ethereum developers say these upgrades will make the Ethereum network more competitive with both private and public blockchain software. More specifically, as part of the upgrade, Homestead introduces three Ethereum Improvement Protocols (EIPs): EIP-2, EIP-7, and EIP-8.

Stephan Tual, founder of Slock.it and former CCO of Ethereum, said that with these technical improvements, developers will not need to undergo training.

One of the big changes is what Tual mentioned: the removal of the Canary contract, which essentially allows ethereum team members to step in with Frontier software if there is a consensus failure.

“Prior to this, if the Canary contract is activated, client mining will be suspended to allow for the situation to be regained and the hard fork to occur. After the contract is removed, the Ethereum network will be fully booted up and operating autonomously.”

Tual also outlined another major change: the introduction of new code for Solidity, the language used to write the ethereum virtual machine, which is part of the protocol that handles the network’s internal state.

Tual said,

“The ability to hard fork and get miner support at any time (whether to upgrade the software is decided by miners voting) is very different from other blockchains and paves the way for major upgrades in the future.”

Along with the protocol upgrade, developers also launched a wallet called Mist, which allows users to write and deploy smart contracts in addition to storing ether. Mougayar said that while this functionality of Mist is not new to the bitcoin space, it is a “big deal” for Ethereum, which does not have such a product.

Through software forks and Homestead’s new dominant protocol, more decentralized applications will emerge.

Keys said that in addition to Homestead, some of the applications he’s most looking forward to are: predictable markets, a decentralized music platform, a tokenized gold custodian and asset tracking system, and an easy way to convert bitcoin to ether.

Supporters like Keys believe that the integration of these upgrades will lead to more institutions accepting Ethereum as a blockchain technology that will become an indispensable financial product in the future, alongside Bitcoin.

Keys said:

“Fortune 500 companies are realizing that Ethereum’s Turing-complete virtual machine and smart contract language are necessary to create enterprise applications.”

Original: http://www.coindesk.com/ethereum-blockchain-homestead/
By Jacob Donnelly
Compiled by: Kyle
Source (translation): Babbitt Information (http://www.8btc.com/ethereum-blockchain-homestead)