Ethereum Is Positive On Releasing Constantinople Upgrade by Mid-January 2019

By Kapil Gauhar

Much has been going in and around the arrival of Ethereum’s forthcoming Constantinople hard fork update. The Hard Fork, scheduled for earlier this month, is likely to launch on the January 16th, 2018. Last month, amid the testnet launch of Constantinople, it ran into a lot of hurdles. The core team of developers conducted a meeting amid the October end, where they chose not to rush through the process.

This new date of 16th January is an experimental decision which was made through a non-verbal agreement. Though, this isn’t fixed or final yet. Developers have made it clear beforehand that the Hard Fork can even see a possible further extension provided that any additional problems arise.

Péter Szilágyi, the Core developer, exclaimed –

“We can just say mid-January, it doesn’t make a difference if we decide on a date or not. We can always postpone.”

Lane Rettig, the other developer, provided the insights into the research which was done regarding the Ethereum’s difficulty-bomb.

The difficulty bomb implies the rise in difficulty of mining new blocks on the Ethereum network. Over a period, as the complexity arises, it will decrease in a slowdown in the number of blocks included. Ultimately, this might prove to be deterrent for the miners. Though, Ethereum has plans to move from PoW (Proof of Work) to PoS (Proof of Stake) going ahead.

There was a discussion of including a ProgPow protocol during the last conference call amid the Constantinople upgrade. The ProgPow is aimed at enhancing Ethereum’s resistance to the specialized mining hardware such as ASICs. There is a fear that current use of ASIC chips can centralize their mining power in the hands of a few powerful miners. Though, the implementation was not discussed amid the latest conference call. The developers still noted some issues regarding its implementation saying that a formal specification for the code seems incomplete.