Watch the Ethereum hard fork upgrade tomorrow, this article is enough

In less than 24 hours, the world’s second-largest blockchain by market value is expected to launch its sixth and seventh system-wide upgrades, which will see ethereum’s global user base asked to make two near-simultaneous changes to the code.

(Image source: unsplash)

Both upgrades, dubbed Constantinople and St. Petersburg, will be implemented as “hard forks,” meaning code changes that add new rules to the ethereum software that are incompatible with past versions. Both upgrades will also take place at the same block — block 7,280,000.

If users decide to upgrade, St. Petersburg will effectively disable a portion of the Constantinople code that was found to have a major vulnerability affecting the security of smart contracts in January. In addition, four of the five Ethereum Improvement Proposals (EIPs) in this upgrade — according to independent Ethereum developer Lane Rettig — will not be noticeable to the average user.

In an interview with CoinDesk, Rettig called Constantinople primarily a “maintenance and optimization upgrade,” stressing in September that the only user group that would see significant changes from the upgrade would be ethereum miners.

Indeed, once activated, Constantinople and St. Petersburg will reduce the issuance of Ethereum block rewards from 3 ETH to 2 ETH, just like the previous hard fork - the previous Byzantium hard fork upgrade reduced Ethereum block rewards from 5 ETH to the current 3 ETH.

Rettig told CoinDesk via email:

“The reduction in ETH block rewards…will obviously have a significant impact on miners.”

As Eric Conner, founder of information site ETHHub, explained, the change is only temporary until miners on the Ethereum blockchain are finally replaced by a new type of validator in Ethereum’s next upgrade project, Serenity.

Conner told CoinDesk in September 2018:

“In late 2018 and 2019 [ETH supply] was beyond what the community had originally envisioned. ETH inflation is now 7.5%… [We] lowered it to 2 ETH per block reward — about 4.5% inflation — as a stopgap measure until Casper is complete.”

Ahead of tomorrow’s upgrade, here are some of the key takeaways from Ethereum’s upcoming code changes:

1. This hard fork upgrade is a collection of some updates

In addition to the reduction in block reward issuance, there are a number of other technical upgrades that are expected to improve operations on the Ethereum blockchain before its larger Casper FFG upgrade is fully implemented.

These include EIP 145 "Bit-shift instructions in the EVM", EIP 1014 "Skinny CREATE2", and EIP 1052 "EXTCODEHASH opcode".

On the subject of EIP 145, Stephen King, CEO of ethereum-based real estate marketplace Imbrex, explained to CoinDesk:

“Adding bit shift instructions will make it slightly cheaper to perform certain functions on-chain. This is a step in the right direction to make developing on the Ethereum platform more cost-effective for (decentralized application) developers.”

For a comprehensive look at every proposal in Constantinople, including one that will be deprecated in St. Petersburg, read our full coverage: Ethereum Constantinople is Coming: 5 Major Upgrades You Need to Know

2. You can watch the progress of this upgrade in real time

Currently, the blockchain browser website Amberdata estimates the activation time of Constantinople and St. Petersburg to be 19:15 (UTC) on February 28.

But because the speed of block mining varies over time, Ethereum users, miners, and developers need to keep an eye on the website's real-time data to understand how this time estimate changes as the number of blocks increases. Once activated, users can monitor the progress of both hard forks in real time using the developer tool "fork monitor", which visualizes Ethereum blockchain data as a time series graph.

For more details on other useful metrics like network hashrate, ETH market price and node count at the time of the upgrade, see CoinDesk’s article, “How to Watch an Ethereum Fork When It Happens.”

3. This upgrade has been delayed before

While the Ethereum community hopes the upgrade will go smoothly, one can never be too sure when it comes to hard forks, and as seen in past Ethereum updates, some user groups can continue to run the old software code if they wish.

This is noteworthy because Ethereum developers encountered multiple roadblocks that delayed the activation of Constantinople after testing of the upgrade began as early as July 2018. The code was expected to be released on the Ethereum mainnet as early as October 2018, but a vulnerability on the Ethereum test network Ropsten caused the mainnet release to be postponed to January of this year.

Subsequently, developers announced in December that the mainnet version of Constantinople would be released at block 7,080,000 — but due to a security vulnerability discovered just before the fork, the activation block height was pushed back to 7,280,000.

To learn more about how Constantinople’s recent security flaws were discovered, and the various decisions that resulted from it, here is a collated list of all major hard fork developments since January:

1. January 11, 2019 — A week before the expected activation of Constantinople on mainnet, developers are cautiously optimistic that the release will go smoothly.

2. January 15, 2019 — 48 hours before the expected activation of block 7080,000, developers were notified of a major security vulnerability.

3. January 18, 2019 — Developers agree to postpone the activation of the Constantinople mainnet until the end of February and propose a new block number. Ethereum core developers propose to activate the Constantinople upgrade at the end of February

4. February 12, 2019 — The final software releases of Constantinople and St. Petersburg from major Ethereum clients such as Geth and Parity were released and subsequently compiled into a comprehensive blog post on the official Ethereum website.

4. Let's complete this upgrade

Due to the lengthy timeline for this upgrade, last but not least, is the current community sentiment towards the upcoming release of Constantinople (and St. Petersburg).

As Tyler Monahan, CEO of blockchain wallet tool MyCrypto, admitted to CoinDesk:

“I’m eager to get past Constantinople because it’s been a distraction for a lot of core developers, the community, and the entire ecosystem. What we need to focus on now is the path forward for Ethereum.”

Independent core developer Lane Rettig agrees.

Rettig said the planned hard fork has been “delayed long enough,” telling CoinDesk that “[developers] have too many things to focus on.”

"Everything that needs to be checked has been checked. All systems are functioning properly. Everything looks good, which is a good sign. So, there are no lingering concerns... We need to get moving and achieve our next milestone."

According to Rettig, these milestones first include a proposed code change to alter the ethereum mining algorithm so that all miners in the ecosystem work on a fairer playing field.

Additionally, there are a number of newly proposed EIPs up for discussion, collectively known as ethereum 1x, paving the way for an intermediate roadmap towards Serenity. Last but not least, developers have also been keeping an eye on research progress regarding the Serenity protocol itself.

Monahan told CoinDesk:

“I think once Constantinople is behind us, we hope that the community, educators, developers, and researchers can really focus on understanding this path forward and communicating that path to people of all technical abilities and education levels.”