Ethereum Promises An Upgrade By Mid-January Of Next Year

A hard fork scheduled for the Ethereum blockchain this month has been delayed.  The Constantinople upgrade is one of the largest to take place on the network and developers have revealed that a number of hurdles have forced them to postpone the launch until the bugs are worked out.  If everything goes well, Constantinople will be introduced by mid-January 2019.

When Constantinople was launched on a testnet in October, it immediately ran into a number of issues.  To ensure that the now features and enhancements will not impair the blockchain, developers decided the best course of action was to delay its release, pending further testing.  According to core developer Peter Szilagyi, “We can just say mid-January, it doesn’t make a difference if we decide on a date or not. We can always postpone.”

One of the issues discovered was with how blocks would be mined on the network.  There is a “difficulty bomb” that could result in an ever-increasing slowdown of the number of blocks included, which could ultimately lead to many miners deciding against mining Ether.  

Developers are now also considering the introduction of a new protocol, ProgPow, which would enhance the blockchain and make it resistant to the use of application-specific integrated circuit (ASIC) mining equipment.  ASIC chips have caused many in the crypto community to call for them to be banned because they could allow for mining centralization. This, they argue, goes against the concept of cryptocurrency as a decentralized currency.  Whether or not ProgPow will be introduced remains to be seen, as Ethereum developers feel that an implementation code is incomplete in its current form.

If the developers are able to push forward with the release of Constantinople in January, it would more than likely be introduced first to the testnet.  After ensuring that the upgrade is working and is stable, it could then be introduced on the mainnet in a second fork, possibly in February.