Ethereum is expected to carry out Berlin upgrade on April 14, including four EIPs

Ethereum is expected to carry out Berlin upgrade on April 14, including four EIPs News

After months of planning, the Ethereum community has laid out a timeline for the upcoming Berlin upgrade, a major milestone in the Ethereum development roadmap.

Tim Beiko wrote on Monday that the Berlin hard fork is scheduled to take place on April 14 at block 12,244,000. Ropsten, the first testnet to be upgraded, is scheduled to be upgraded on March 10. The Goerli and Rinkeby networks are expected to be upgraded over a week on March 17 and March 24, respectively.

Ethereum node operators are advised to upgrade to a Berlin-compatible version for the three testnets as soon as possible and for the mainnet by April 7. Beiko explained:

“Ethereum node operators should upgrade their nodes prior to the network fork they wish to participate in. Due to the variability of block times, it is recommended to upgrade a few days before the expected date.”

Exchanges, wallet service providers, and ETH holders do not need to do anything to meet the upgrade requirements.

A total of four Ethereum Improvement Proposals (EIPs) will be implemented via the Berlin hard fork. They include:

EIP-2565, which reduces the cost of ModExp precompiled contracts;

EIP-2929, which increases certain gas costs;

EIP-2718, which introduces a new transaction type;

EIP-2930, which includes a transaction type with an optional access list.

Prior to the Berlin hard fork, the Istanbul and Muir Glacier upgrades took place in December 2019 and January 2020, respectively. The current upgrade is named after Devcon 0, which was held in Berlin. Ethereum’s next upgrade is scheduled to be called London, where Devcon 1 was held.

Ethereum is still riding the momentum from its Eth2 launch in December 2020. Eth2 kicks off a multi-year upgrade for the Ethereum blockchain network as it seeks to transition from the existing proof-of-work consensus to a proof-of-stake model.

As of the time of this article’s publication, ETH prices are up 6.52% at $1,834. At current prices, Ethereum’s total market capitalization is $204.2 billion.