Ethereum, the world’s second-largest blockchain, is set to receive its next major update in less than a week.

The multi-upgrade, called Metropolis, will execute a hard fork via the Byzantium code at block 4,370,000 on the ethereum mainnet, which is about four days from now.

Upgrading a blockchain via a hard fork requires broad acceptance of the change by all stakeholders. It is worth noting that the Ethereum platform has produced a variety of results when using this mechanism in the past. To date, the Ethereum platform has executed four hard forks, only one of which resulted in the birth of an alternative chain (ETC).

Given that the Byzantine upgrade was proposed when the Ethereum development roadmap was announced in 2015, the possibility of problems is relatively low. It is reported that this Byzantine upgrade will introduce 9 key improvement protocols (EIPs) to the Ethereum platform.

Overall, these updates are designed to make the Ethereum platform lighter and faster, as well as improve Ether transaction speeds, contract security, and, ultimately, privacy.

However, there is still a lot of work to be done for this Ethereum upgrade, and various stakeholders are now entering the final stages of preparation.

Client

The key to this Byzantium upgrade relies on the update of network nodes. In the next few days, the Ethereum community will focus on ensuring that node clients are ready for this upgrade.

This means that startups responsible for overseeing clients need to ensure that their software actually contains the EIP (Ethereum Improvement Proposal) that implements the Byzantium hard fork. There are currently multiple versions of Ethereum clients, which are written in different programming languages ​​and are managed by different development teams.

This is referred to as “client diversity” by the Ethereum community, and is intended to support innovation while maintaining a stable, well-defined base protocol.

In the next week, all major Ethereum clients will release a Byzantium upgrade, which leaves ample time for node upgrades. If some nodes fail to keep up, the Ethereum blockchain will split, forming different versions of the blockchain.

As of press time, most nodes appear to be ready.

Go ethereum (also known as Geth), the most popular Ethereum client, accounts for about 69% of Ethereum nodes. Last week, the client released a Byzantium update client containing block numbers. As of press time, about half of the Geth client nodes have been updated.

Parity, the second largest Ethereum client, also released an updated version yesterday. However, the client was found to have a consensus vulnerability during testing, so the updated version has been withdrawn. It is expected that the Parity client will release a new version of the client later today. As of press time, Parity client nodes account for 35% of the total network nodes, and no node has been correctly updated yet.

The remaining client nodes are relatively few, and some clients have also released Byzantium version updates. The Python-based client created by Ethereum founder Vitalik Buterin has released an update this morning. Similarly, the Java-based EthereumJ client and the JavaScript client EthereumJS have also released updates today.

The developers of the Cpp-ethereum client said they are still working in shifts on this update.

miner

Friends who are familiar with the Ethereum roadmap should know that the long-term plan of the Ethereum protocol is to gradually phase out the Proof-of-Work consensus mechanism (POW) and move to a more experimental Proof-of-Stake mechanism (PoS).

However, the Byzantium update was not prepared for this transition, but parts of it were intended to cushion the transition.

Most notably, the difficulty of Ethereum mining will be significantly reduced after the Byzantium update. This means that Ethereum transaction times will be faster, and miners will be paid less. The reward for a single block will also be reduced to 2ETH after the update. As of press time, the reward for 1 Ethereum block is approximately $604.

While this upgrade has received a lot of support, it has also caused some disputes, which has led some people to threaten to continue supporting the old version of the blockchain, but the probability of this causing any impact is relatively low.

Application Developers

In addition, applications based on Ethereum are less likely to encounter trouble.

For example, Mist, an Ethereum-based decentralized application browser, automatically updates when the client is started, and the same applies to other Ethereum dapps.

However, after this upgrade, Ethereum will undergo a major change, and its impact will mainly affect application developers.

After the Byzantium update, the way to detect failed transactions will change, even for deployed contracts. You can find the method for detecting failed transactions after the Byzantium update here.