OKEx And Huobi To Lend Support To Ethereum’s Impending Hard Fork

OKEx and Huobi Global, two leading cryptocurrency exchanges, as per reports will support the Ethereum (ETH) Constantinople hard fork which according to a press release is estimated to take place between Jan. 14 and 18.

The Constantinople hard fork is slated to be an upgrade, that is supposed to change the Ethereum blockchain at a fundamental level, with the synchronous nodes update to the entire system. The hard fork encloses separate Ethereum Improvement Proposals (EIPs) so as to soften the transition from proof-of-work (PoW) to the more energy efficient proof-of-stake (PoS) consensus algorithm.

Ethereum was initially designed as a decentralized application (DApps), where four major upgrades have been outlined to improve the network. All of these are attempts to fulfill Vitalik Buterin’s vision and move from a PoW to a PoS protocol, which will purportedly address mining and scalability-related problems. The new upgrades are working towards backward compatibility, meaning that nodes must either update synchronically with the entire system or carry on running as a separate blockchain entity.

OKEx, a cryptocurrency exchange that provides financial services to global traders who use the blockchain technology, will reportedly take a snapshot of all the OKEx accounts at the block height 7,080,000 which is the number at which Ethereum core developers agreed to launch the hard fork in the beginning of December. The exchange is now contacting traders to deposit their ETH tokens into the exchange as it will administer all the technical requirements for the hard fork.

Huobi, on the other hand, has also said that they will support the hard fork. Similar to OKEx, Huobi advises its clients to deposit their ETH to Huobi Global in order to better deal with any technical issues related to the hard fork that may raise its head. The exchange also expects the hard fork at block height 7,080,000.