Ethereum Constantinople Hard Fork Upgrade Coming Mid Jan 2019

Originally scheduled for November 2018, technical challenges led to delay of Ethereum’s Constantinople upgrade. Now the team behind Ethereum has scheduled Ethereum block number # 7080000 (approx. between Jan 14 to 18, 2019) for the upgrade by hard fork. This code upgrade primarily is a step closer to Proof-of-Stake (PoS) from the existing Proof-of-Work (PoW) consensus algorithm. PoW is not only prone to mining centralization by ASICs, it is also far more difficult for the blockchain to scale up function; where PoS offer easier scaling up of number of transactions per second validated by consensus. The major change in this upgrade will be the reduction of miners’ reward from 3 ETH per block to 2 ETH per block.

Constantinople also aims to delay the ‘difficulty bomb’ of the network. This event is a network level algorithm that exponentially increases the amount of work required to mine a new block. In such a scenario miners’ computational resources become irrelevant for mining, the only way remaining to mine blocks is via the Proof of Stake (PoS) upgrade sometime in future. After the Constantinople upgrade, the PoS Beacon Chain test-net is scheduled for March release.

On Twitter:

#Ethereum Constantinople mainnet hard fork scheduled for block #7080000, estimated around the 16th of January, 2019!

— Péter Szilágyi (@peter_szilagyi) December 7, 2018

These developments of the Ethereum network are stepping stones for blockchain technology’s journey and evolution into the future, our future as well. Stay tuned and don’t miss the future with us. The Future is Now!