All you need to know about the upcoming Ethereum upgrade (hard fork)
Ethereum well known as Ether or ETH introduced in crypto space in August 2014 in a private sale.
Ether Ico raised more than $15M and was the most successful ICO of that time. Initially, the token price in private sale is $0.31 and after 4 years ETH coin is trading above $108 (at the time of writing this article) and gives more than 35000% returns in past 4 years.
While the value of ETH came 94% off its all-time peak of $1,389 on 15th January 2018, it has quickly rebounded by 84% against the US dollar since its December bottom. ETH/USDT advanced as high as $155 from $84, before settling at $108 today.
In this post, we cover the following questions:
1. What is happening?
2. What is a Hard Fork?
3. What is the set of upgrades for this update?
4. What should you do as an Ether (ETH) holder?
5. How should you trade this fork?
What is happening?
Referred to as Constantinople, Ethereum’s hard fork will consist of several codebase modifications specified by five different Ethereum improvement proposals (EIPs). The Ethereum (ETH) hard fork upgrade initially activated at block number 7,080,000(that is postponed for block 7280000), which is expected to be mined between 16th and 17th January. We are currently at block number 7152665 and we can expect the Hardfork to happen around 27-28 Feb 2019 as it takes approximately 15 seconds for one block to be mined approximately.
What is a Hard Fork?
While they are essentially software upgrades, upgrades to crypto projects are specifically known as “forks” because of the underlying blockchain technology. Since blockchain operates via the consensus of the majority, if an upgrade is contentious (i.e. there are power users that do not want certain changes to be made to the existing chain), the blockchain network might split into two separate chains. Therefore, a hard fork is a backwards incompatible upgrade that is somewhat similar to upgrades performed to applications, such as Microsoft Word. For instance, an older version of the Word processing program may not be able to accurately read and display all the characters and fonts in a file that was created using the latest version of MS Word (example from source: cryptoglobe).
What is the set of upgrades for this update?
The set of upgrades planned for Ethereum, with Constantinople, are non-contentious as all
network participants have reportedly agreed to activate the five EIPs listed below:
EIP 145 – More cost-effective and overall efficient approach to processing information, by
adding bitwise shifting operators to the Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM);
EIP 1014 – a Better approach to accommodating network-scaling solutions such as off-chain
transactions;
EIP 1052 – an improvement to how contracts are processed;
EIP1234 – 12-month delay of difficulty bomb; reduces mining rewards from 3 ETH to 2 ETH
per block;
EIP 1283 – a better way to monetize data storage changes, made by smart contract
programmers)
What should you do as an Ether (ETH) holder?
Many exchanges have announced their support of the fork so if your ETH is held on these exchanges, you need not
The software changes to be activated with Constantinople will not, for the most part, be noticeable to users. However, to avoid any unexpected events, you should transfer your ETH to these exchanges before the fork, assuming that you plan to hold on to your H.
How should you trade this Fork?
The Constantinople hard fork is important as it aims to smoothen the shift from the current proof-of-work (PoW) protocol to the proof-of-stake (PoS) protocol. PoS is deemed as a better consensus algorithm as it aims to solve the issue of the large computing power needed for PoW, while also improving how smart contracts are processed to better prepare the protocol for future scaling solutions.
Price Prediction For Ether(ETH)
After the Ether upgrade is successfully implemented the network is switched to Proof of Stack (PoS) from Proof of Work (PoW). There is no need for expensive mining hardware and everyone gets a chance to earn the block reward ( reduced to 2 ETH per block form 3ETH) just by holding their Ether. For long term hodler Ether is very cheap now and the price may surge above $1000 in the next couple of years.
