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"Cautious optimism."
This is how Hudson Jameson, developer of relations for the Ethereum Foundation, described the state of mind in view of the fifth update of the system foreseen by ethereum, Constantinople.
Scheduled for activation on Wednesday, January 16 at approximately 12:00 UTC, Constantinople is a type of update known as hard fork, which means that it must be installed unilaterally on all nodes of the network to function as intended.
This approach is a process that involves intrinsic risks. For example, if a sufficient number of users do not agree with an update, it may cause division of the network. An event of this kind took place in 2016, when a controversial hard fork following the collapse of the DAO led to the emergence of two distinct blockchain, ethereum and ethereum classics.
Furthermore, Afri Schoedon, in charge of the Parity ethereum customer release, said the risk of a chain split is low because of the adoption of the upgrade by the best mining pools of ethereum – the most criticism in avoiding a division – it was strong.
"Miners are prepared," said Schoedon. "Only miners can divide the chain".
Currently, a monitoring website run by Peter Pratscher, the CEO of Ethermine's largest ethereal mining pool, tracks the adoption of Constantinople for only 15.6%. Speaking with CoinDesk, Pratscher said the statistics were wrong and claimed that adoption would be closer to the majority.
"We expect most of the outdated nodes to be updated at the time of the blocking," said Pratscher.
Named after the capital of the Byzantine Empire, Constantinople is part of a three-part upgrade called Metropolis. Combines a total of five proposals for ethereal improvement (EIP). And while most are non-controversial changes, one aspect of the update has been the cause of some controversy.
In particular, Constantinople delays the "difficulty-bomb", an algorithm in ethereum that increases the difficulty of extraction over time. Since the upgrade will decrease the difficulty of extraction, steps are also needed to reduce the reward that the miners have been assigned to protect the network: from 3 ETH to 2 ETH per block.
This led miners to express dissatisfaction with the update. But at the same time, the main mining basins have intensified to support change.
"We expect a problem-free update," noted Pratscher.
Apart from that, there are also other risks for a system-wide network upgrade. Code bugs can cause network fragmentation and algorithms may go wrong, leading to unforeseen difficulties. But developers are convinced that these risks are minimal in Constantinople, and in the months leading up to next week's event, the tests tried to identify software vulnerabilities.
"We have tested and monitored software such as our monitor forks and the protocol fuzz tester that constantly monitors the problems before, during and after the hard forks," said Hudson Jameson,
"We are very excited to implement these changes to the ethereum protocol, but we put the safety and stability of the network first."
Matrix of updates
Constantinople introduces five new updates to the network.
As previously explained by CoinDesk, these include optimizations for developers looking to make the design of intelligent and decentralized applications more accessible.
Taylor Monahan, the managing director of the MyCrypto ethereum portfolio, described the general thrust of Constantinople's updating as "improvements in the quality of life for the development of the contract".
According to the main developer Nick Johnson, one of these upgrades, EIP 1283, involves what is called "net gas measurement". Originally created by Johnson, this element will improve one of the usability problems in the course of ethereum – the increase in gas costs.
"With this, we can reduce unnecessary gas overload for contracts, as well as make new coding models cost-effective," he said.
Another update – cited by several developers as the most exciting of the change of Constantinople – is EIP 1014. Also called Skinny CREATE2, the update should open new types of level two scaling solutions, such as status channels.
"It allows you to create new types of status channels that reduce or even eliminate the costs of implementing onchain, improving scalability and reducing costs and problems for users," said Johnson.
According to Alexey Akhunov of Turbo Geth, the EIP 1014 could have an impact on future changes to the ethereum, such as the potential implementation of rental or rolling costs for storing data on the ethereum platform. And it could also lead to other new, unpredictable smart contract features.
"Another exciting (and potentially dangerous) thing that CREATE2 allows [is] recreating contracts at the same address after they have been destroyed, "said Akhunov, explaining:
"This recreation can be performed with the same code or (with a little more deception) with a different code – which basically leads to completely updatable contracts".
Constantinople also includes 2 further updates – EIP 145 and EIP 1052 – which will improve the ease of use for the development of smart contracts and simplify certain operations within the ethereum code.
"With these improvements we can expand what we can easily do with the ethereum chain to understand more cases of use," Johnson said.
Miners debates
However, while the majority of Constantinople includes well-tested and technically simple changes, there is another change of code that has been the subject of heated debate. Written by Parri & # 39; s Afri Schoedon, the change of code in question is EIP 1234.
And this because one of the main aspects of Constantinople is a delay for what is known as the "difficulty bomb" next to the technical characteristics mentioned above.
Originally intended to facilitate the transition to the next switch consensus of ethereum, proof-of-stake, the difficulty bomb is an algorithm that incrementally increases the time needed to produce new blocks.
In the end, the bomb forces the blockchain into a state known as "glaciation", during which the difficulty becomes so high that the transactions can no longer be confirmed. As such, the algorithm also has the advantage of encouraging frequent changes to the code to modify it.
According to Akhunov, delaying the bomb of difficulty is the most critical aspect of Constantinople.
"The main importance of Constantinople is to delay the bomb of difficulty, otherwise the difficulty of mining would begin to rise abruptly.Therewith, there are no changes that are really crucial," he said.
However, delaying the difficulty bomb comes with its subtleties. This is because the speed with which the blocks are produced on ethereum also determines the regularity with which the internal cryptocurrency of the platform is emitted, the ether.
To this end, Constantinople decreases mining premiums from 3 ETH to 2 ETH per block – a move that has sparked controversy with blockchain miners who depend on rewards to keep their mining operations profitable.
The escalation of the controversy is the emergence of increasingly specialized mining hardware for ethereum, which according to some risks making mining operations less feasible for hobby miners – who often use GPU hardware rather than specialized ASICs.
"In general, we do not wait for the update of ethereum Constantinople," stated Etherstone's Pratscher. "[Constantinople] it will make the extraction unprofitable for many miners that will have a negative impact on the safety of the ethereum network ".
Pratscher cited the recent attack on classic ethereum, in which the blockchain was overwhelmed by a hostile force, as an example of the problems that may occur if there are fewer miners present.
"The fact that 51% of the attacks are a real threat is currently demonstrated by the recent attack against the [ethereum classic] network ", he said.
Brian Venturo, who runs a small mining center called Atlantic Crypto, echoed these concerns, telling CoinDesk:
"The EIP-1234 in Constantinople will immediately increase the pressure on the mining economy".
The next phase
Because of this imminent reduction in payments by miners, miners like Pratscher and Venturo are relying on potential future updates, called ProgPoW, which promises to block specialized ASIC hardware from the network and ensure that the extraction of GPU remains competitive.
At the time of printing, it is not clear whether this change will be implemented. While an "attempt" was made at a developer meeting at the beginning of January, discussions on the proposal have failed to reach a consensus since.
However, developers are confident that technical work will continue over the next few months as the two level improvements continue to grow and the training aspects of the eagerly awaited update of ethereum – Serenity – begin to crystallize.
All in all, the next update has encouraged a state of mindful apprehension.
"I'm a little nervous about Constantinople, because it's always hard to guess how likely something is going wrong," Akhunov said.
According to Akhunov, in the worst case scenario, something goes wrong with the new difficulty algorithm and causes interruptions to network security. Other developers have cited consensus issues as the biggest concern. MyCrypto's Taylor Monahan said he was very concerned by the potential of scammers to use the update as an opportunity to deceive people from their funds.
But regardless of the risks involved in the upgrade, the developers are sure they have done everything possible to ensure that they are up to date. Furthermore, there are some advantages also for the difficulty bomb.
For example, even if some nodes are left behind in Byzantium software, the impending bomb means that it will become unusable in the coming months and will be forced to upgrade to continue making transactions on ethereum.
For this reason, Monahan said that Constantinople "feels good".
"Everyone's hard work is paying off," he said, adding:
"Many people will benefit from improvements (even if they do not realize it) through cheaper contracts, more efficient opcodes and the opening of more possibilities for contractual interaction."
Image of the astronomical clock via Shutterstock
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