Ethereum (ETH) is about to hard fork again? At least that’s what founder Vitalik thinks

A familiar scene?

Ethereum founder Vitalik Buterin suggested today that Ethereum (ETH) platform developers may need to use硬分叉to resolve attacks on the network, although no timeline has been announced. If the community agrees, this hard fork will come less than three months after its last controversial hard fork.

While there are potential risks (last time, the Ethereum hard fork upgrade did not go as planned), the new fork seems to have received initial support as it is seen as an effective solution to Ethereum network attacks.

In recent weeks, the Ethereum (ETH) blockchain has been hit by a series of denial-of-service attacks that have slowed down ether transactions and caused node crashes. Several exchanges, including Kraken and ShapeShift, have suspended ether trading.

Because of this, developers are looking for solutions that can solve the problem quickly.

Ethcore developer Marek Kotewicz pointed out that a hard fork seems to be the simplest option to solve the current attack problem.

He told reporters:

“Nobody likes hard forks, but I think that’s what we need to do.”

Last month, Go client developers released six new versions of the client to fix various denial of service attacks. In their view, instead of continuing to create new versions of the client (the team releases a new version every three days on average), the hard fork solution seems to be a permanent solution.

Is it controversial?

It should be noted that this hard fork may be different from the last controversial hard fork to resolve the issue of The DAO.

In the eyes of many Ethereum developers, this hard fork is non-controversial because it will improve the security of Ethereum, unlike the last time.

Since the next hard fork will bring security changes, developers expect it to have a positive impact on users.

“I don’t expect this hard fork to be too contentious, a technical fork is basically just an update to the protocol that was clearly necessary,” geth client developer Zsolt Felföldi told CoinDesk.

It seems that hard forks have become part of Ethereum’s genes, and many people in its community believe that hard forks are a way to upgrade Ethereum software to support greater goals.

“The Ethereum project has always chosen to upgrade its technology via hard forks,” explained Heiko Hees, a developer on the Ethereum Raiden Network.

In the eyes of developers, this hard fork looks more like the hard fork that upgraded to Homestead.

Felföldi said:

“Just as Homestead was easily adopted by everyone, I expect the same to be true for this hard fork.”

Why a hard fork?

The attacker took advantage of Ethereum’s gas problem, which allows attackers to cheaply disrupt the entire network when gas prices are low, a problem that developers are working to solve.

Although there are many versions of hard forks currently being planned, the main point is the same, which is to increase the price of gas (the gas price of some versions will be 10 to 20 times higher than before).

For example, EIP 150, the most accepted hard fork version at present, solves this problem.

Buterin explained in a reddit post that developers eventually hope to adopt a more dynamic gas fee market to meet the changing needs of the network. However, it is difficult to achieve this goal at present, so the team hopes to launch a quick solution to solve the network attack problem as soon as possible.

“In the long term, there are certainly ways to make gas fees more flexible,” Buterin explained in the post.

What other communities think

Even in other blockchain communities, some believe that a hard fork is the only option for Ethereum (ETH) at this time.

An Ethereum (original chain) developer also supported the idea.

“With Metropolis coming up, there will undoubtedly be more issues. So if they continue to make small changes, they will be at risk of compounding attacks,” said Vic Arulchandran, a supporter of the original ethereum chain.

He agreed that a hard fork is the best option to resolve the network attack problem as quickly as possible. (It is worth noting that the original Ethereum chain has also suffered a DoS attack and may need to consider a similar solution).

Elsewhere, Blockstream chief architect Christopher Allen agreed that a hard fork was the most likely outcome.

“They actually have to do a hard fork, with all the risks that come with a hard fork,” he told CoinDesk at the Scaling Bitcoin conference last week.

However, some people also said that this hard fork still has risks.

Economist and investor Tuur Demeester believes that Ethereum may face the problem of splitting again.

“The hard fork that created the classic chain has caused a lot of animosity and resentment among many people in the community,” he said.

On the other hand, his criticism was not directed at the hard fork, but at the Ethereum development team’s attitude towards security and how they have handled issues in the past.

“I would be concerned that this would destabilize the ethereum network,” Demeester said.

Summarizing the likely view of many observers, he added:

“I’m curious to see how it plays out.”